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ROCOCO: VOTE BY BALLOT: 
FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 



THREE SHORT PLAYS 
ROCOCO: VOTE BY BALLOT: 
FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 
BY GRANVILLE BARKER 



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^WVAD/Q3S 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1919 



Copyrighi, 1917, 
By Gra:nville Barker. 



AU rights reserved ^ 



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ROCOCO, VOTE BY BALLOT, and FAREV/ELL TO TFE THFATRE are futi'ly 

protected hy copyright and must not he performed either by 
amateurs or professionals without written permission. For such 
permission, and for the " acting version " with full stage direc- 
tions, apply to The Paget DramaSc Agency, 25 West 4^ik 
Street, New York City. 






l\ilLt.<jHnnuJ^ 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Rococo I 

Vote by Ballot 31 

Farewell to the Theatre 61 



Rococo 

A FARCE 
1912 



ROCOCO 

Do you know how ugly the drawing-room of an English vicar- 
age can he? Yes, I am aware of all that there should he 
ahout it; the old-world grace and charm of Jane- 
Austenism. One should sit upon Chippendale and 
glimpse the grey Norman church-tower through the 
casement. But what of the pious foundations of a 
more industrial age, churches built in mid-nineteenth 
century and rather scamped in the huilding, dedicated 
to the Glory of God and the soul's health of some sweating 
and sweated urhan district? The Bishop would have 
a vicarage added grumhled the church-donor. Well, 
then, consider his comfort a little, hut to the glory of 
the Vicar nothing need he done. And nothing was. 
The architect {this an added labour of hut little love to 
him) would give an ecclesiastical touch to the front porch, 
a pointed top to the front door, add some stained glass 
to the staircase window. But a mean house, a stuffy 
house, and the Vicar must indeed have fresh air in 
his soul if mean and stuffy doctrine was not to he gener- 
ated there. 

The drawing-room would be the best room, and not a had room 
in its way, if it weren't that its proportions were vile, 
as though it felt it wanted to he larger than it was, 
and if the window and the fireplace and the door didn't 
seem to he quarrelling as to which should he the most 
conspicuous. The fireplace wins. 

This particular one in this particular drawing-room is of yellow 
wood, stained and grained. It reaches not quite to the 
ceiling. It has a West Front air, if looking-glass may 

3 



4 ROCOCO 

stand for windows; it is fretted, moreover, here and there, 
with little trefoil holes. It bears a full assault of the 
Vicar's wife's ideas of how fa make the place "look 
nice." There is the clock, of course, which won't keep 
time; there are the vases which won't hold water; framed 
photographs, as many as can he crowded on the shelves; 
in every other crevice knickknacks. Then, if you 
stand, as the Vicar often stands, at this point of van- 
tage you are conscious of the wall-paper of amber and 
blue with a frieze above it measuring off yard by yard 
a sort of desert scene, a mountain, a lake, three palm 
trees, two camels; and again; and again; until by the 
corner a camel and a palm tree are cut out. On the 
walls there are pictures, of course. Two of thetn convey 
to you in a vague and water-coloury sort of way that an 
English countryside is pretty. There is "Christ among 
the Doctors," with a presentation brass plate on its 
frame; there is "Simply to Thy Cross I Cling." And 
there is an illuminated testimonial to the Vicar, a mark 
of affection and esteem from the flock he ministered to as 
senior curate. 

The furniture is either very heavy, stuffed, sprung, and tapestry- 
covered, or very light. There are quite a number of 
small tables {occasional-tables they are called), which 
should have four legs but have only three. There are 
several chairs, too, on which it would he unwise to sit 
down. 

In the centre of the room, beneath the hanging, pink-shaded, 
electric chandelier, is a mahogany monument, a large 
round table of the "pedestal" variety, and on it tower 
to a climax the vicarage symbols of gentility and 
culture. In the centre of this table, beneath a glass 
shade, an elaborate reproduction of some sixteenth- 
century Pietd {a little High Church, it is thought; but 
Art, for some reason, runs that way). It stands on a 
Chinese silk mat, sent home by some exiled uncle. It 



ROCOCO 5 

is symmetrically surrounded by gift books, a photograph 
album, a tray of painted Indian figures {very jolly! 
another gift from the exiled uncle), and a whalers tooth. 
The whole affair is draped with a red embroidered 
cloth. 
The window of the room, with so many sorts of curtains and 
blinds to it that one would think the Vicar hatched 
conspiracies here by night, admits but a blurring light, 
which the carpet {Brussels) reflects, toned to an ugly 
yellow. 

You really would not expect such a thing to be happening in 
such a place, but this carpet is at the moment the base 
of an apparently mortal struggle. The Vicar is under- 
most, his baldish head, when he tries to raise it, falls 
hack and bumps. Kneeling on him, throttling his 
collar, is a hefty young man conscientiously out of temper, 
with scarlet face glowing against carrotty hair. His 
name is Reginald and he is {one regrets to add) the 
Vicar's nephew, though it be only by marriage. The 
Vicar's wife, fragile and fifty, is making pathetic 
attempts to pull him of. 

"Have you had enough? " asks Reginald and grips the Vicar hard. 

"Oh, Reginald . . . be good,'' is all the Vicar's wife's appeal. 

Not two yards of a minor battle rages. Mrs. Reginald, coming 
up to reinforce, was intercepted by Miss Underwood, 
the Vicar's sister, on the same errand. The elder 
lady now has the younger pinned by the elbows and 
she emphasises this very handsome control of the situa- 
tion by teeth-rattling shakes. 

"Cat . . . cat . , . cat!" gasps Mrs. Reginald, who is plump 
and flaxen and easily disarranged. 

Miss Underwood only shakes her again, "I'll teach you 
manners, miss." 

"Oh, Reginald . . . do drop him," moans poor Mrs. Under- 
wood. For this is really very bad for the Vicar, 



6 ROCOCO 

"Stick a pin into him, Mary,^^ advises her sister-in-law. 
Whereat Mrs. Reginald yelps in her iron grasp, 

"Don't you dare . . . it's poisonous" and then, "Oh . . . 
if you weren't an old woman Fd have boxed your 
ears." 

Three violent shakes. "Would you? Would you? Would you? " 

"/ haven't got a pin, Carinthia," says Mrs. Underwood. 
She has conscientiously searched. 

"Pull his hair, then," commands Carinthia. 

At intervals, like a signal gun, Reginald repeats his query: 
"Have you had enough?" And the Vicar, though it is 
evident that he has, still, with some unsurrendering 
school-days' echo answering in his mind, will only gasp, 
"Most undignified . . . clergyman of the Church of 
England . . . your host, sir . . . ashamed of you . . . 
let me up at once." 

Mrs. Underwood has failed at the hair; she flaps her hands in 
despair. "It's too short, Carinthia," she moans. 

Mrs. Reginald begins to sob pitifully. It is very painful to 
be tightly held by the elbows from behind. So Miss 
Underwood, with the neatest of twists and pushes, 
lodges her in a chair, and thus released herself, folds 
her arms and surveys the situation. "Box my ears, 
would you?" is her postscript. 
MRS. REGINALD. Well . . . you boxed father's. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. Where is your wretched father-in-law? 
Her hawklike eye surveys the room for this unknown 
in vain. 
REGINALD. {The proper interval having apparently elapsed."} 

Have you had enough? 

Dignified he cannot look, thus outstretched. The Vicar, 
therefore, assumes a mixed expression of saintliness and 
obstinacy, his next best resource. His poor wife moans 
again. ... 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, please, Reginald . . . the floor's 

so hard for him! 



ROCOCO 7 

REGINALD. £A little auxious to have done with it himself^ 
Have you had enough? 

THE VICAR. \_Quite supine^ Do you consider this conduct 
becoming a gentleman? 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. And . . . Simon! . . . if the servants 
have heard . . . they must have heard. What will they 
think? 

No, even this heart-breaking appeal falls flat. 
REGINALD. Say you've had enough and I'll let you up. 
THE VICAR. [^Reduced to casuistry^ It's not at all the 
sort of thing I ought to say. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. {So helpless."] Oh ... I think you 
might say it, Simon, just for once. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. [Grim with the pride of her own victory^ 
Say nothing of the sort, Simon! 

The Vicar has a hurst of exasperation; for, after all, he 
is on the floor and being knelt on. 
THE VICAR. Confound it all, then, Carinthia, why don't 
you do something? 

Carinthia casts a tactical eye over Reginald. The 
Vicar adds in parenthesis . . . a human touch! . . . 
THE VICAR. Don't kneel there, you young fool, you'll 
break my watch! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Wait till I get my breath. 

But this prospect raises in Mrs. Underwood a perfect 

dithyramb of despair. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, pleasc, Carinthia . . . No . . . 

don't start again. Such a scandal! I wonder everything's 

not broken. \_So coaxingly to Reginald.2 Shall I say it 

for him? 

MRS. REGINALD. [_Fat little bantam, as she smooths her 
feathers in the armchair.^ You make him say it, Reggie. 
But now the servants are on poor Mrs. Under- 
wood's brain. Almost down to her knees she goes. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. They'll be coming up to see what the 
noise is. Oh . . . Simon! 



8 ROCOCO 

It does strike the Vicar that this would occasion con- 
siderable scandal in the parish. There are so few good 
excuses for being found lying on the carpet, your 
nephew kneeling threateningly on the top of you. So 
he makes up his mind to it and enunciates with musical 
charm; it might be a benediction. . . . 
THE VICAR. I have had enough. 
REGINALD. [In some relief r\ That's all right. 

He rises from the prostrate church militant; he even, 

helps it rise. This pleasant family party then look at 

each other, and, truth to tell, they are all a little ashamed. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. \yValking round the re-erected pillar 

of righteousness 7\ Oh, how dusty you are! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Ycs! ^^The normal self uprising^ 
Room's not been swept this morning. 

The Vicar, dusted, feels that a reign of moral law can 
now be resumed. He draws himself up to fully five 
foot six. 
THE VICAR. Now, sir, you will please apologise. 
REGINALD. \_Looking Very mtiscular.2 I shall not. 

The Vicar drops the subject. Mrs. Reginald mutters 
and crows from the armchair. 
MRS. REGINALD. Ha . . . who began it? Black and blue 
I am! Miss Underwood can apologise . . . your precious 
sister can apologise, 

MISS UNDERWOOD. \X^rushing if inconsequent^ You're 
running to fat, Gladys. Where's my embroidery? 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. I put it Safe, Carinthia. [_She dis- 
closes it and then begins to pat and smooth the dishevelled 
room.2 Among relations too! One expects to quarrel 
sometimes ... it can't be helped. But not fighting! Oh, 
I never did ... I feel so ashamed! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. {^Britannia -like. "^ Nonsense, Mary. 
MRS. REGINALD. Nobody touched you. Aunt Mary. 
THE VICAR. {^After his eyes have wandered vaguely round.2 
Where's your father, Reginald? 



ROCOCO 9 

REGINALD. [^Quite tiftintereskd. He is straightening his 
own tie and collar.'} I don't know. 

In the little silence that follows there comes a voice from 
under the mahogany monument. It is a voice at once 
dignified and pained, and the property of Reginald's 
father, whose name is Mortimer Uglow. And it says . . . 

THE VOICE. I am here. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. [Who may he forgiven nerves^ Oh, 
how uncanny! 

REGINALD. [Still at his tie.} Well, you can come out, 
father, it's quite safe. 

THE VOICE. [Most unexpectedly.} I shall not. [And then 
more unexpectedly still.} You can all leave the room. 

THE VICAR. [Who is generally resentful.} Leave the 
room! whose room is it, mine or yours? Come out, Mor- 
timer, and don't be a fool. 

But there is only silence. Why will not Mr. Uglow 
come out? Must he be ratted for? Then Mrs. Under- 
wood sees why. She points to an object on the floor. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Simon! 

THE VICAR. What is it? 

Again, and this time as if to indicate some mystery, 
Mrs. Underwood points. The Vicar picks up the 
object, some disjection of the fight he thinks, and waves 
it mildly. 

THE VICAR. Well, where does it go? I wonder every- 
thing in the room's not been upset! 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. No, Simon, it's not a mat, it's his . . . 
She concludes with an undeniable gesture, even a smile. 
The Vicar, sniffing a little, hands over the trophy. 

REGINALD. [As he views it.} Oh, of course. 

MRS. REGINALD. Reggie, am I tidy at the back? 

He tidies her at the back — a meticulous matter of hooks 
and eyes and oh, his fingers are so big. Mrs. Under- 
wood has taken a little hand-painted mirror from the 
mantelpiece, and this and the thing in question she 



10 ROCOCO 

places just without the screen of the falling tablecloth 

much as a devotee might place an ofering at a shrine. 

But in Miss Underwood dwells no respect for persons. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Now, sir, for Heaven's sake put on 

your wig and come out. 

There emerges a hand that trembles with wrath; it re- 
trieves the offerings; there follow bumpings into the 
tablecloth as of a head and elbows. 
THE VICAR. I must go and brush myself. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Simon, d'you think you could tell 
the maids that something fell over . . . they are such 
tattlers. It wouldn't be untrue. \^It wouldn't!'] 

THE VICAR. I should scorn to do so, Mary. If they ask 
me, I must make the best explanation I can. 

The Vicar swims out. Mr. Mortimer Uglow, his 
wig assumed and hardly awry at all, emerges from be- 
neath the table. He is a vindictive-looking little man. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. You're not hurt, Mortimer, are you? 
Mr. U glow's only wound is in the dignity. That he 
cures by taking the situation oratorically in hand. 
MR. UGLOW. If we are to continue this famUy discussion 
and if Miss Underwood, whom it does not in the least con- 
cern, has not the decency to leave the room and if you, Mary, 
cannot request your sister-in-law to leave it, I must at least 
demand that she does not speak to m e again. 

Whoever else might be impressed, Miss Underwood 
is not. She does not even glance up from her em- 
broidery. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. A good thing for you I hadn't my 
thimble on when I did it. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Carinthia, I don't think you should 
have boxed Mortimer's ears . . . you know him so slightly. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. He Called me a Futile Female. I 
considered it a suitable reply. 

The echo of that epigram brings compensation to Mr. 
Uglow. He puffs his chest. 



ROCOCO 11 

MR. UGLOW. Your wife rallied to me, Reginald. I am 
much obliged to her . . . which is more than can be said 
of you. 

REGINALD. Well, you can't hit a woman. 

MR. UGLOW. \^Bitingly7\ And she knows it. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Pf! 

The sound conveys that she would tackle a regiment of 
men with her umbrella: and she would. 
REGINALD. \^Apoplectic, but he has worked down to the 
waistr\ There's a hook gone. 

MRS. REGINALD. I thought so! Lacc torn? 
REGINALD. It doesn't show much. But I tackled Uncle 
Simon the minute he touched Gladys . . . that got my 
blood up all right. Don't you worry. We won. 

This callously sporting summary is too much for Mrs. 
Underwood: she dissolves. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, that such a thing should ever have 
happened in our house! . . . in my drawing-room! ! . . . real 
blows! ! ! . . . 

MRS. REGINALD. Dou't cry, Auut Mary ... it wasn't 
your fault. 

The Vicar returns, his hair and his countenance 
smoother. He adds his patting consolations to his 
poor wife's comfort. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. And I was kicked on the shin. 
MRS. REGINALD. Say you're sorry, Reggie. 
THE VICAR. My dear Mary . . . don't cry. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. £Clasping her beloved's arm7\ Simon 
did it . . . Reggie was throttling him black ... he 
couldn't help it. 

THE VICAR. I suggest that we show a more or less Chris- 
tian spirit in letting bygones be bygones and endeavour to 
resume the discussion at the point where it ceased to be an 
amicable one. [His wife, her clasp on his coat, through her 
drying tears has found more trouble^ Yes, there is a slight 
rent . . . never mind. 



n ROCOCO 

The family party now settles itself into what may have 
been more or less the situations from which they were 
roused to physical combat. Mr. Uglow secures a 
central place. 
MR. UGLOW. My sister-in-law Jane had no right to be- 
queath the Vase ... it was not hers to bequeath. 

That is the gage of battle. A legacy! What English 

family has not at some time shattered its mutual regard 

upon this iron rock. One notices now that all these 

good folk are in deepest mourning, on which the dust of 

combat stands up the more distinctly^ as indeed it 

should. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Mortimer, think if you'd been 

able to come to the funeral and this had all happened then 

... it might have done! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. But it didn't, Mary . . . control 
yourself. 

MR. UGLOW. My brother George wrote to me on his 
death-bed . . . \\And then fiercely to the Vicar, as if this 
concerned his calling.'^ . . . on his death-bed, sir. I have 
the letter here. . . . 
THE VICAR. Yes, we've heard it. 
REGINALD. And you sent them a copy. 

Mr. Uglow's hand always seems to tremble; this time 
it is with excitement as he has pulled the letter from his 
pocket-book. 
MR. UGLOW. Quiet, Reginald! Hear it again and pay 
attention. \^They settle to a strained boredom.'] "The 
Rococo Vase presented to me by the Emperor of Ger- 
many" . . . Now there he's wrong. {^The sound of his own 
reading has uplifted him: he condescends to them7\ They're 
German Emperors, not Emperors of Germany. But George 
was an inaccurate fellow. Reggie has the same trick . . . 
it's in the family. I haven't it. 

He is returning to the letter. But the Vicar interposes, 
lamblike, ominous though. 



ROCOCO IS 

THE VICAR. I have not suggested on Mary's behalf . . . 
I wish you would remember, Mortimer, that the position 
I take up in this matter I take up purely on my wife's be- 
half. What have I to gain? 

REGINALD. [Clodhoppifig^ Well, you're her husband, 
aren't you? She'll leave things to you. And she's older 
than you are. 

THE VICAR. Reginald, you are most indelicate. \\And 
then, really thinking it is true . . . ] I have forborne to 
demand an apology from you. ... 

REGINALD. Because you wouldn't get it. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. [^Genuinely and generously accommodat- 
ing^ Oh, I don't want the vase ... I don't want any- 
thing! 

THE VICAR. [He is gradually mounting the pulpit.'J 
Don't think of the vase, Mary. Think of the principle 
involved. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. And you may die first, Simon. 
You're not strong, though you look it . . . all the colds 
you get . . . and nothing's ever the matter with me. 

MR. UGLOW. [^Ignored . . . ignored^ Mary, how much 
longer am I to wait to read this letter? 

THE VICAR. [Ominously, ironically lamblike now.^ Quite 
so. Your brother is waiting patiently . . . and politely. 
Come, come; a Christian and a businesslike spirit! 

Mr. Uglow's very breath has been taken to resume the 
reading of the letter when on him . . . worse, on that 
tender top-knot of his . . . he finds Miss Underwood's 
hawklike eye. Its look passes through him, piercing 
Infinity as she says . . . 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Why not a skull-cap ... a sanitary 
skull-cap? 

MR. UGLOW. [With a minatory though fearful gas p. 2 
What's that? 

THE VICAR. Nothing, Mortimer. 

REGINALD. Some people look for trouble! 



14 ROCOCO 

MISS UNDERWOOD. [^Addressing the Infinite still ^ And 
those that it fits can wear it. 

THE VICAR. \_A little fearful himself. He is terrified of 
his sister, that's the truth. And well he may be.J Let's have 
the letter, Mortimer. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Or at least a Httle gum ... a little 
glue ... a little stickphast for decency's sake. 

She swings it to a beautiful rhythm. No, on the whole, 
Mr. Uglow will not join issue. 

MR. UGLOW. I trust that my dignity requires no vindica- 
tion. Never mind ... I say nothing. [And with a for- 
giving air he returns at last to the letter.'] ''The Rococo Vase 
presented to me by the Emperor of Germany" ... or 
German Emperor. 

THE VICAR. Agreed. Don't cry, Mary. Well, here's a 
clean one. [Benevolently he hands her a handkerchief.] 

MR. UGLOW. "On the occasion of my accompanying the 
mission." 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Mission! 
The word has touched a spot. 

THE VICAR. Not a real mission, Carinthia. 

MR. UGLOW. A perfectly real mission. A mission from 
the Chamber of Commerce at . . . Don't go on as if the 
world were made up of low church parsons and . . . and . . . 
their sisters! 

As a convinced secularist behold him a perfect fighting 
cock, 

REGINALD. [Bored, but oh, so bored!] Do get ahead, 
father. 

MR. UGLOW. [With a flourish.] "Mission et cetera." 
Here we are. " My dear wife must have the enjoyment " . . . 
l^Again he condescends to them.] Why he called her his dear 
wife I don't know. They hated each other like poison. 
But that was George all over . . . soft . . . never would 
face the truth. It's a family trait. You show signs of it, 
Mary. 



ROCOCO 15 

THE VICAR. Z'^oft and low.'] He was on his death-bed. 

REGINALD. Get Oil . . . father. 

MR. UGLOW. "My wife" . . . She wasn't his dear wife. 
What's the good of pretending it? . . . "must have the en- 
joyment of it while she Hves. At her death I desire it to 
be an heirloom for the family," {^And he makes the last sen- 
tence tell, every word.] There you are! 

THE VICAR. l_LamUike, ominous, ironic, persistent!] You 
sit looking at Mary. His sister and yours. Is she a member 
of the family or not? 

MR. UGLOW. [Cocksure!] Boys before girls . . . men 
before women. Don't argue that . . . it's the law. Titles 
and heirlooms ... all the same thing. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. [Worm-womanlike, turning ever so 
little!] Mortimer, it isn't as if we weren't giving you all 
the family things . . . the miniature and the bust of John 
Bright and grandmother's china and the big Shake- 
speare . . . 

MR. UGLOW. Giving them, Mary, giving them? 

THE VICAR. Surrendering them willingly, Mortimer. 
They have ornamented our house for years. 

MRS. REGINALD. It isn't as if you hadn't done pretty well 
out of Aunt Jane while she was alive! 

THE VICAR. Oh, delicacy, Gladys! And some regard for 
the truth! 

MRS. REGINALD. [No nonsense about her.] No, if we're 
talking business let's talk business. Her fifty pounds a year 
more than paid you for keeping her, didn't it? Did it or 
didn't it? 

REGINALD. [^Gloomily.] She never eat anything that I 
could see. 

THE VICAR. She had a delicate appetite. It needed 
teasing ... I mean coaxing. Oh, dear, this is most un- 
pleasant ! 

REGINALD. Fifty pound a year is nearly a pound a week, 
you know, 



16 ROCOCO 

THE VICAR. What about her clothes . . . what about 
her little holidays . . . what about the doctor . . . what 
about her temper to the last? \^He summons the classics 
to clear this sordid air.Ji Oh: De mortuis nil nisi bonum! 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. She was a great trouble with her 
meals, Reginald. 

MR. UGLOW. {_Letting rip!} She was a horrible woman. 
I disliked her more than any woman I've ever met. She 
brought George to bankruptcy. When he was trying to 
arrange with his creditors and she came into the room, her 
face would sour them ... I tell you, sour them. 

MRS. REGINALD. [^She sums it up.} Well, Uncle Simon's 
a clergyman and can put up with unpleasant people. It 
suited them well enough to have her. You had the room, 
Aunt Mary, you can't deny that. And anyway she's dead 
now . . . poor Aunt Jane! \^She throws this conventional 
verbal bone to Cerberus.} And what with the things she has 
left you . . . ! What's to be done with her clothes? 

Gladys and Mrs. Underwood suddenly face each other 
like two ladylike ghouls. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Well, you remember the mauve 
snk . . . 

THE VICAR. Mary, pray allow me. [JSomehow his delicacy 
is shocked.} The Poor. 

MRS. REGINALD. \^In violent protest!} Not the mauve 
silk! Nor her black lace shawl! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. {Shooting it out.} They will make soup. 
// makes Mr. Uglow jump, physically and mentally too. 

MR. UGLOW. What! 

MISS UNDERWOOD. The proceeds of their sale will make 
much needed soup . . . and blankets. \^Again her gaze 
transfixes that wig and she addresses Eternity^ No brain 
under it! . . . No wonder it's loose! No brain. 
Mr. Uglow just manages to ignore it. 

REGINALD. Where is the beastly vase? I don't know 
that I want to inherit it. 



ROCOCO 17 

MR. UGLOW. Yes, may I ask for the second or third time 
to-day? . . . 
MISS UNDERWOOD. The third. 

MR. UGLOW. {He screws a baleful glance at herJ] May 
I ask for the second or third time . . . 
REGINALD. It is the third time, father. 
MR. UGLOW. £His own son, foo!^ Reginald, you have 
no tact. May I ask why the vase is not to be seen? 
MISS UNDERWOOD. [^Sharply.'} It's put away. 
MRS. REGINALD. £As sharp as she. Never any nonsense 
about Gladys.'] Why? 

MR. UGLOW. Gladys . . . ignore that, please, Mary? 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Ycs, Mortimer. 
MR. UGLOW. It has been chipped. 
THE VICAR. It has not been chipped. 
MR. UGLOW. I f it has been chipped ... 
THE VICAR. I say it has not been chipped. 
MR. UGLOW. If it had been chipped, sir ... I should 
have held you responsible! Produce it. 

He is indeed very much of a man. A little more and 
he 7/ slap his chest. But the Vicar, lamblike, etc. . . . 
we can now add dangerous. . . . 
THE VICAR. Oh, no, we must not be ordered to produce it. 
MR. UGLOW. [Trumpet-toned r\ Produce it, Simon. 
THE VICAR. Neither must we be shouted at. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. . . . or bawlcd at. Bald at! Ha, ha! 
And she taps her grey-haired parting with a thimbled 
finger to emphasize the pun, Mr. Uglow rises, too in- 
tent on his next impressive stroke even to notice it, 
or seem to. 
MR. UGLOW. Simon, if you do not instantly produce the 
vase I shall refuse to treat this any longer in a friendly way. 
I shall place the matter in the hands of my solicitors. 

This, in any family — is it not the final threat? Mrs. 
Underwood is genuinely shocked. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Simon! 



18 ROCOCO 

THE VICAR. As a matter of principle, Mary. . . . 

REGINALD. {Impartially^ What rot! 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. It was put away, I think, so that the 
sight of it might not rouse discussion . . . wasn't it Simon? 

REGINALD. Well, we'vc had the discussion. Now get 
it out. 

THE VICAR. {^Lamblike . . . etc.; add obstinate now^ 
It is my principle not to submit to dictation. If I were asked 
politely to produce it. . . . 

REGINALD. Ask him poHtely, father. 

MR. UGLOW. [Why shouldn't he have principles, too?~\ I 
don't think I can. To ask politely might be an admission 
of some right of his to detain the property. This matter 
will go further. I shall commit myself in nothing without 
legal advice. 

MRS. REGINALD. You get it out, Aunt Mary. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. {Almost thankful to be helpless in the 
matter r\ I can't. I don't know where it is. 

MR. UGLOW. \_All the instinct for Law in him blazing^ You 
don't . . . ! This is important. He has no right to keep 
it from you, Mary. I venture to think. . . . 

THE VICAR. Husband and wife are one, Mortimer. 

MR. UGLOW. Not in Law. Don't you cram your religion 
down my throat. Not in Law any longer. We've im- 
proved all that. The married woman's property act! I 
venture to think. . . . 

Miss Underwood has disappeared. Eer comment is 
to slam the door. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. I think perhaps Carinthia has gone 
for it, Mortimer. 

MR. UGLOW. {The case given him, he asks for costs, as it 
were."} Then I object. ... I object most strongly to this 
woman knowing the whereabouts of a vase which you, 
Mary. . . . 

THE VICAR. {A little of the mere layman peeping now.2 
Mortimer, do not refer to my sister as "this woman, '^ 



ROCOCO 19 

MR. UGLOW. Then treat my sister with the respect that 
is due to her, Simon. 

They are face to face. 

THE VICAR. I hope I do, Mortimer. 

MR, UGLOW. And will you request Miss Underwood not 
to return to this room with or without the vase? 

THE VICAR. Why should I? 

MR. UGLOW. What has she to do with a family matter 
of mine? I make no comment, Mary, upon the way you 
allow yourself to be ousted from authority in your own 
house. It is not my place to comment upon it and I make 
none. I make no reference to the insults . . . the un- 
womanly insults that have been hurled at me by this Futile 
Female . . . 

REGINALD. [_A remembered schoolmaster joke. He feels 
not unlike one as he watches his two elders squared to each other P^ 
Apt alliteration's artful aid . . . what? 

MR. UGLOW. Don't interrupt. 

MRS. REGINALD. You're getting excited again, father. 

MR. UGLOW. I am not. 

MRS. REGINALD. Father! 

There is one sure way to touch Mr. Uglow. She takes 
it. She points to his wig. 

MR. UGLOW. What? Well . . . where's a glass . . . 
where's a glass? 

He goes to the mantelpiece mirror. His sister follows him. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. We talked it over this morning, Mor- 
timer, and we agreed that I am of a yielding disposition and 
I said I should feel much safer if I did not even know where 
it was while you were in the house. 

MR. UGLOW. [With every appropriate bitterness^ And I 
your loving brother! 

THE VICAR. [_Not to be outdone by Reginald in quotations!^ 
A little more than kin and less than kind. 

MR. UGLOW. [His wig is straight^ How dare you, 
Simon? A little more than ten minutes ago and I was 



20 ROCOCO 

struck . . . here in your house. How dare you quote 
poetry at me? 

The Vicar feels he must pronounce on this. 
THE VICAR. I regret that Carinthia has a masterful 
nature. She is apt to take the law into her own hands. 
And I fear there is something about you, Mortimer, that 
invites violence. I can usually tell when she is going to be 
unruly; there's a peculiar twitching of her hands. If you 
had not been aggravating us all with your so-called argu- 
ments, I should have noticed it in time and . . . taken 
steps. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. We're really very sorry, Mortimer. 
We can always . . . take steps. But . . . dear me! . . . 
I was never so surprised in my life. You all seemed to go 
mad at once. I makes me hot now to think of it. 

The truth about Carinthia is that she is sometimes 
thought to he a little of her head. It '5 a form of genius. 
THE VICAR. I shall have a headache to-morrow . . . my 
sermon day. 

Mr. Uglow now begins to glow with a sense of coming 

victory. And he's not bad-natured, give him what he 

wants. 

MR. UGLOW. Oh, no, you won't. More frightened than 

hurt ! These things will happen . . . the normal gross-feeding 

man sees red, you know, sees red. Reggie as a small boy . . . 

quite uncontrollable! 

REGINALD. Well, I like that! You howled out for help. 
THE VICAR. {^Lamblike and only lamblike^ I am willing 
to obliterate the memory. 

MRS. REGINALD. I'm sure I'm black and blue . . . and 
more torn than I can see. 

MR. UGLOW. But what can you do when a woman forgets 
herself? I simply stepped aside ... I happen to value my 
dignity. 

The door opens. Miss Underwood with the vase. She 
deposits it on the mahogany table. It is two feet in 



ROCOCO 21 

height. It is lavishly blotched with gold and white and 
red. It has curves and crinkles. Its handles are bossy. 
My God, it is a Vase! 
MISS UNDERWOOD. There it is. 

MR. UGLOW. [With a victor's dignity."] Thank you, Miss 
Underwood. [He puts up gold-rimmed glasses.] Ah . . . 
pure Rococo! 

REGINALD. The Vi-Cocoa vase! 

MR. UGLOW. That's not funny, Reginald. 

REGINALD. Well ... I think it is. 

The trophy before him, Mr. Uglow mellows. 
MR. UGLOW. Mary, you've often heard George tell us. 
The Emperor welcoming 'em . . . fine old fellow . . . 
speech in German . . . none of them understood it. Then 
at the end . . . Gentlemen, I raise my glass. Hock . . . 
hock . . . hock! 

REGINALD. [Who knows a German accent when he hears it.] 
A little more spit in it. 

MR. UGLOW. Reginald, you're very vulgar. 
REGINALD. Is that Potsdam? 

The monstrosity has coloured views on it, one hack, one 
front. 
MR. UGLOW. Yes . . . home of Friedrich der Grosse! 
A great nation. We can learn a lot from 'em! 

This was before the war. What he says of them now 
is unprintable. 
REGINALD. Yes. I suppose it's a jolly handsome piece 
of goods. Cost a lot. 
MR. UGLOW. Royal factory . . . built to imitate Sevres! 
Apparently he would contemplate it for hours. But 
the Vicar . . . Lamblike, etc.; add insinuating now. 
THE VICAR. Well, Mortimer, here is the vase. Now 
where are we? 

MRS. REGINALD. [Really protesting for the first time.] 
Oh . . . are we going to begin all over again! Why don't 
you sell it and share up? 



22 ROCOCO 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Gladys, I don't think that would be 
quite nice. 

MRS. REGINALD. I Can't sce why not. 

MR. UGLOW. Sell an heirloom ... it can't be done. 

REGINALD. Oh, ycs, it can. You and I together . . . cut 
off the entail . . . that's what it's called. It'd fetch twenty 
pounds at Christie's. 

MR. UGLOW. {The sight of it has exalted him beyond reason!} 
More . . . more! First class rococo. I shouldn't dream 
of it. 

Miss Underwood has resumed her embroidery. She 
pulls a determined needle as she says . . . 

MISS UNDERWOOD. I think Mary would have a share in 
the proceeds, wouldn't she? 

MR. UGLOW. I think not. 

THE VICAR. Why not, Mortimer? 

MR. UGLOW. [With fine detachment.} Well, it's a point 
of law. I'm not quite sure . . . but let's consider it in 
Equity. [Not that he knows what on earth he means!} If I 
died . . . and Reginald died childless and Mary survived 
us . . . and it came to her? Then there would be our 
cousins the Bamfords as next inheritors. Could she by 
arrangement with them sell and . . . ? 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. I shouldn't hke to sell it. It would 
seem like a slight on George . . . because he went bankrupt 
perhaps. And Jane always had it in her bedroom. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. [ThimbUng the determined needle 
through.} Most unsuitable for a bedroom. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. [Anxious to please.} Didn't you 
suggest, Simon, that I might undertake not to leave it out 
of the family? 

THE VICAR. [Covering a weak spot.} In private conversa- 
tion with you, Mary . . . 

MR. UGLOW. [Most high and mighty, oh most!} I don't 
accept the suggestion. I don't accept it at all. 

THE VICAR. [^And now taking the legal line in his turn.2 



ROCOCO 23 

Let me point out to you, Mortimer, that there is nothing 
to prevent Mary's selling the vase for her own exclusive 
benefit. 
MR. UGLOW. ^His guard down^ Simon! 
THE VICAR. {_Satisfied to have touched himr\ Once again, 
I merely insist upon a point of principle. 

MR, UGLOW. \_But now flourishing his verbal sword^ And 
I insist ... let everybody understand it ... I insist that 
all thought of selling an heirloom is given up ! Reginald . . . 
Gladys, you are letting me be exceedingly upset. 

REGINALD. Well . . . shall I walk off with it? They 
couldn't stop me. 

He lifts it up; and this simplest of solutions strikes them 
all stupent; except Miss Underwood, who glances under 
her bushy eyebrows. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. You'U drop it if you're not careful. 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Reggie, you couldn't carry that 
to the station . . . everyone would stare at you. 

THE VICAR. I hope you would not be guilty of such an 
imprincipled act. 

MRS. REGINALD. I won't havc it at home, Reg, so I tell 
you. One of the servants'd be sure to ... ! \_She sighs 
desperately 7\ Why not sell the thing? 
MR. UGLOW. Gladys, be silent. 

REGINALD. [^As he puts the vase down, a little nearer the 
edge of the table. "2 It is a weight. 

So they have argued high and argued low and also argued 

round about it; they have argued in a full circle. And 

now there is a deadly calm. Mr. Uglow breaks it; 

his voice trembles a little as does his hand with its signet 

ring rattling on the table. 

MR. UGLOW. Then we are just where we started half an 

hour ago . . . are we, Simon? 

THE VICAR. {^Lamblike in excelsis.'} Precisely, Mortimer. 

MR. UGLOW. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. £He gazes 

at them with cool ferocity^ Now let us all keep our tempers. 



U ROCOCO 

THE VICAR. I hope I shall have no occasion to lose mine. 

MR. UGLOW. Nor I mine. 

He seems not to move a muscle, but in some mysterious 
way his wig shifts: a sure sign. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Mortimer, you*re going to get 
excited. 

MR. UGLOW. I think not, Mary. I trust not. 

REGINALD. \^Pr offering real temptation. 2 Father . . . 
come away and write a letter about it. 

MR. UGLOW. [^As his wrath swells. '2 If I write a letter . . . 
if my solicitors have to write a letter . . . there are 
people here who will regret this day. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. {Trembling at the coming storm.'] 
Simon, I'd much sooner he took it . . . I'd much rather 
he took everything Jane left me. 

MR. UGLOW. Jane did not leave it to you, Mary. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Mortimer, she did try to leave it 
to me. 

MR. UGLOW. [^Running up the scale of indignation.] She 
may have tried . . . but she did not succeed . . . because 
she could not . . . because she had no right to do so. [_And 
reaching the summit.] I am not in the least excited. 

Suddetily Miss Underwood takes a shrewd hand in 
the game. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Have you been to your lawyer? 

MR. UGLOW. {Swivelling round.] What's that? 

MISS UGLOW. Have you asked your lawyer? 
He has not. 

MR. UGLOW. Gladys, I will not answer her. I refuse to 
answer the . . . the . . . the female. {But he has funked 
the 'futile.'] 

MRS. REGINALD. {Soothing him.] All right, father. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. He hasn't because he knows what his 
lawyer would say. Rot's what his lawyer would say! 

MR. UGLOW. {Calling on the gods to protect this woman 
from him. 2 Heaven knows I wish to discuss this calmly! 



ROCOCO 25 

REGINALD. Aunt Mary, might I smoke? 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Not in the drawing-room. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. No . . . not in the drawing-room, 
please, Reginald. 

MR. UGLOW. You're not to go away, Reginald. 

REGINALD. Oh, well . . . hurry up. 

Mr. Uglow looks at the Vicar. The Vicar is actually 
smiling. Can this mean defeat for the house of Uglow ? 
Never. 

MR. UGLOW. Do I understand that on your wife's behalf 
you entirely refuse to own the validity of my brother George's 
letter . . . where is it? ... I read you the passage written 
on his death-bed. 

THE VICAR. [Measured and confident. Victory gleams 
for him now.'} Why did he not mention the vase in his 
wiU? 

MR. UGLOW. There were a great many things he did not 
mention in his wiU. 

THE VICAR. Was his widow aware of the letter? 

MR. UGLOW. You know she was. 

THE VICAR. Why did she not carry out what you think 
to have been her husband's intention? 

MR. UGLOW. Because she was a beast of a woman. 

Mr. Uglow is getting the worst of it, his temper is 
slipping. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Mortimer, what language about the 
newly dead! 

THE VICAR. An heirloom in the family? 

MR. UGLOW. Quite so. 

THE VICAR. On what grounds do you maintain that 
George's intentions are not carried out when it is left to 
my wife? 

And indeed, * Mr. Uglow is against the ropes,^ so to 
speak. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. The man hasn't a wig to stand on. . . . 
I mean a leg. 



26 ROCOCO 

MR. UGLOW. l^Pale with fury, hoarse with it, even pathetic 
in it^ Don't you speak to me ... I request you not to 
speak to me. 

Reginald and Gladys quite seriously think this is 
bad for him. 

REGINALD. Look here, father, Aunt Mary will undertake 
not to let it go out of the famUy. Leave it at that. 

MRS. REGINALD. We don't Want the thing, father . . . 
the drawing-room's full already. 

MR. UGLOW. \iThe pathos in him growing; he might flood 
the best Brussels with tears at any momentJ} It's not the vase. 
It's no longer the vase. It's the principle. 

MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, dou't, Mortimer . . . don't be 
like Simon. That's why I mustn't give in. It'll make 
it much more difficult if you start thinking of it like 
that. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. ^Pulling and pushing that embroidery 
needle more grimly than ever. 2 It's a principle in our family 
not to be bullied. 

MRS. REGINALD. [^In almost a vulgar tone, really."] If 
she'd go and mind her own family's business! 

The Vicar knows that he has his U glows on the run. 
Suavely he presses the advantage. 

THE VICAR. I am sorry to repeat myself, Mortimer, but 
the vase was left to Jane absolutely. It has been 
Specifically left to Mary. She is under no obligation to 
keep it in the family. 

MR. UGLOW. [jOontrol breaking!!] You'll get it, will you 
. . . you and your precious female sister? 

THE VICAR. [Qwie/gy and quieter; that superior quietude!] 
Oh, this is so unpleasant. 

MR. UGLOW. [Control broken!] Never! Never! ! . . . 
not if I beggar myself in law-suits. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. [A suddcn and vicious jab.] Who 
wants the hideous thing? 

MR. UGLOW. [^Broken, all of him. In sheer hysterics. 



ROCOCO 27 

Tears starting from his eyes."} Hideous! You hear her? 
They'd sell it for what it would fetch. My brother George's 
rococo vase ! An objet d'art et vertu ... an heirloom . . . 
a family record of public service! Have you no feelings, 
Mary? 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. ^Dissolved.'} Oh, I'm very unhappy. 
Again are Mr. Uglow and the Vicar breast to breast. 
THE VICAR. Don't make your sister cry, sir. 
MR. UGLOW. Make your sister hold her tongue, sir. She 
has no right in this discussion at all. Am I to be provoked 
and badgered by a Futile Female? 

The Vicar and Mr. Uglow are intent on each other, the 
others are intent on them. No one notices that Miss 
Underwood's embroidery is very decidedly laid down 
and that her fingers begin to twitch. 
THE VICAR. How dare you suppose, Mortimer, that Mary 
and I would not respect the wishes of the dead? 
MR. UGLOW. It's nothing to do with you, either. 

Miss Underwood has risen from her chair. This 
Gladys does notice. 
MRS. REGINALD. I say . . . Uncle Simon. 
THE VICAR. What is it? 

REGINALD. Look here, Uncle Simon, let Aunt Mary 
write a letter undertaking. . . . There's no need for all 
this row. . . . 

MRS. UNDERWOOD, I will! I'll Undertake anything! 
THE VICAR. [The Church on its militant dignity now^ 
Keep calm, Mary. I am being much provoked, too. Keep 
calm. 

MR. UGLOW. {Stamping it out.^ He won't let her . . . 
he and his sister ... he won't give way in anything. Why 
should I be reasonable? 

REGINALD. If she will undertake it, will you . , . ? 
MRS. REGINALD. Oh, Aunt Mary, stop her! 

In the precisest manner possible, judging her distance 
with care, aiming well and true, Miss Underwood has 



28 ROCOCO 

jor the second time to-day^ soundly hexed Mr. U glow's 
ear. He yells. 
MR. UGLOW. I say . , . I'm hurt. 
REGINALD. Look here now . . . not again! 
THE VICAR. \He gets flustered. No wonder?^ Carinthia! 
I should have taken steps! It is almost excusable. 
MR. UGLOW. I'm seriously hurt. 

MRS. REGINALD. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. Did you feel the thimble? 
MRS. UNDERWOOD. Oh, Carinthia, this is dreadful! 
MR. UGLOW. I wish to preserve my dignity. 

He hacks out of her reach that he may the better do so. 
MISS UNDERWOOD. Your wig's crooked. 
MRS. REGINALD. ^Rousing: though her well-pinched arms 
have lively recollections of half an hour ago.^ Don't you insult 
my father. 

MISS UNDERWOOD. Shall I put it straight? It'll be oflE 
again. 

She advances, her eyes gleaming. To do . . . Heaven 
knows what! 
MR. UGLOW. ^Still hacking."} Go away. 
REGINALD. [Who really doesn't fancy tackling the lady 
either^ Why don't you keep her in hand? 

MR. UGLOW. ^Backed as far as he can, and in terror!] 
Simon, you're a cad and your sister's a mad cad. Take 
her away. 

But this the Vicar will not endure. He has been called a cad, 
and that no English gentleman will stand, and a clergy- 
man is a gentleman, sir. In ringing tones and with his 
finest gesture you hear him. "Get out of my house!'* 
Mr. Uglow doubtless could reply more fittingly were it 
not that Miss Underwood still approaches. He is 
feebly forcible merely. "Don't you order me about," 
he quavers. What is he hut a fascinated rabbit before 
the terrible woman? The gentlemanly Vicar advances — 
"Get out before I put you out," he vociferates — English- 



ROCOCO 29 

man to the backbone. But that is Reginald's waited- 
for excuse. "Oh, no, you don't," he says and bears 
down on the Vicar. Mrs. Underwood yelps in soft 
but agonized apprehension: "Oh, Simon, be careful." 
Mr. Uglffw has his hands up, not indeed in token of 
surrender, — though surrender to the virago poised at him 
he would, — but to shield his precious wig. 

"Mind my head, do," he yells; he will have it that it is his head. 
"Come away from my father," calls out Mrs. Reginald, 
stoutly clasping Miss Underwood from behind round 
that iron-corseted waist. Miss Underwood swivels 
round. "Don't you touch me, Miss," she snaps. But 
Gladys has weight and the two are toppling groundward 
while Reginald, one hand on the Vicar, one grabbing at 
Miss Underwood to protect his wife ("Stop it, do!" he 
shouts), is outbalanced. And the Vicar making still 
determinedly for Mr. Uglow, and Mr. Uglow, his wig 
securer, preparing to defy the Vicar, the melee is joined 
once more. Only Mrs. Underwood is so far safe. 

The fighters breathe hard and sway. They sway against the 
great mahogany table. The Rococo Vase totters; it 
falls; it is smashed to pieces. By a supreme effort 
the immediate authors of its destruction — linked to- 
gether — contrive not to sit down among them. Mrs. 
Underwood is heard to breathe, "Oh . . . . Thank 
goodness " 



Vote by Ballot 

A COMEDY IN ONE ACT 



1914 



VOTE BY BALLOT 

It is one of those days of spring in England when the English 
spring is behaving itself. The sun shines white through 
the open French window into Mrs. Torpenhouse^s 
drawing-room and adds another pattern to the carpet, 
while little motes that must otherwise inhabit the room 
unseen seem happy in its beams. It is a pretty room, 
empty at the moment, for ten minutes ago Mrs. Torpen- 
house, with a garden hat on, her hands looking enormous 
in rough gloves, a basket slung to her arm, went out 
through that open window. It is Mrs. Torpenhouse^s 
own particular room and she lives her life in it. But it 
is called the drawing-room; just as Mr. Torpenhouse^s 
particular room is called the study. Then there is the 
dining-room, of course, and there is Mrs. Torpenhouse's 
bedroom. It is Mr. Torpenhouse's bedroom, too, but 
it is called hers. Then there is his dressing-room. 
There is a spare room where you can put anybody, and 
another spare room where you can hardly put anybody. 
And there are places for the three servants (Oh, but they 
will not keep the windows open!) and there is a garden 
room, and a few odd holes and corners. With that you 
have an upper middle class English house {be careful 
about the ''upper") standing in the suburbs of a country 
town, run on (say) £500 a year. And Mr. Torpen- 
house's salary, "all in," is £800, so there is a comfort- 
able margin. Besides, there are the accumulated savings 
of thirty years, never touched, the interest on them ac- 
cumulating too. 

It is not quite a typical house, for the Torpenhouses are not 
exactly typical people and the house reflects them: in 

33 



34 VOTE BY BALLOT 

particular it reflects her. In the drawing-room, for in^ 
stance, you will find furniture which could only have 
been chosen by someone who liked good furniture be- 
cause it was good. There are no wonderful ''pieces,'* 
they are not all of a period; but it seems that each chair 
and table must have been asked to join the others, first for 
its own sake and then because they would all get on well 
together. The curtains are such pretty curtains and they 
look neither too new nor too old. The patterns on them 
and on the wall paper and the carpet are modest patterns. 
There are not too many ornaments about either, — some 
few things bought because she liked them, some kept 
for old association's sake. Vivid colour the room does 
lack. Possibly to Mrs. Torpenhouse life itself is an 
affair of delicate halftones, of grey and blue and mauve, 
and white that is not too white. Well, everything 
is spotlessly, chastely clean and well polished where 
polish should be. 

On this spring morning . . . and it is nearly noon . . . while 
she, with garden hat and gloves and basket is outdoors, 
the square-faced, saucer-eyed Parlour-maid, stiff in 
print frock, shows into this drawing-room Lord Silver- 
well. He is sixty and his country riding clothes are 
smart. They are his armour, for beneath a quite harm- 
less pomposity one may discern a slightly apologetic soul. 
A man, one would say, who has been thrust willy-nilly 
into importance. Nor when we learn that he is a 
wealthy manufacturer, a self-made man, a petty prince 
of commerce, need we revise this judgment. Mostly such 
folk are left wondering, after the first few years, how on 
earth they did get rich. In their hearts they are some- 
times a little ashamed of it. 

But the Parlour-maid whose bugle eye does not discern the 
innermost of things, is impressed by the visitor, even a 
little confused. 
THE MAID. Yes, Mrs. Torpenhouse is at home, sir . , , 



VOTE BY BALLOT 35 

^Her little mouth left gaping, then closes on the bigger morsel^ 
my lord. 

LORD siLVERWELL. Then I'll wait for Mr. Torpenhouse. 
And tell Mrs. Torpenhouse that . . . {hut he swallows it 
altogether] is here. 

THE MAID. Yes, my lord. 

The maid is going as Mrs. Torpenhouse arrives through 
the window. The Maid then does go. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I saw you ride up. Someone took 
your horse? I was down in the meadow looking for mush- 
rooms. 

She removes the enormous glove to give him a pretty, 
hardly wrinkled hand. Though she is not a tiny woman, 
she is fragile, and there is about her both expectation and 
surprise, as if she felt that all the queer things the 
world did do were simply nothing to the queerer things 
it might. 
LORD SILVERWELL. That's a new maid. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. YeS. 

LORD SILVERWELL. She knew there was a title now, but 
she didn't know what title . . . and I was too shy to tell 
her. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis is at the Town Hall. 

LORD SILVERWELL. So's Noel. I Said I'd wait for them 
both here ... if I may. j 

They sit down. She shows him a little, though a very 
little gentle deference. s 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lord Silverwell sounds much nicer 
. . . but Lewis says tl^e town was disappointed. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [Enthroned in the bigger chair, his 
voice takes on, I regret to say, a rather pompous tone."] I 
thought that well over . . . and as soon as I could speak of 
my impending . . . elevation I took advice. Cuttleton? 
D'you think that ought to have been the title? I owe 
the place much ... it sounds as democratic as a peerage 
can. 



36 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. But it's how much the town owes 
you, Lewis says, they were thinking of. I suppose they'd 
have liked to stand sort of godfather to you in return. 

LORD siLVERWELL. [^It's odd: he can he pompous and shy 
at the same time.'] Wychway of Cuttleton, I should have 
liked. But to ennoble your own name . . . one has to have 
done something. My own estate . . . Noel was born there, 
even though I bought it . . . that's modest and yet dig- 
nified ... I hope. £^He looks at her even a little appealingly.'] 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis Hkes it. And have you been 
to the House of Lords yet? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Not for worlds! I . . . I . . . it'll 
have to be done, though. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. But they don't wear anything special 
there, do they? Coronets and things? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Only on certain occasions. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Havc you got yours yet? 

LORD SILVERWELL. I've ordered one. It's usual. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. What's it made of? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Silver gilt. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. [_Her eyes twinkling.] Now mind it's 
kept clean. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [^She has him at his ease.] Once a 
week with the forks and spoons. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I'm scrious. 

LORD SILVERWELL. When did Torpenhouse go to the 
Town Hall? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis has been going and coming 
all day. £She seems, naively, as she says it, to he liking the 
sound of her husband^s name. It is one gentle way oj loving 
him.] He's very anxious. 

LORD SILVERWELL. We're all anxious. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. He ate no lunch. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Noel ate no lunch. I ate a fair 
lunch. But I'm very anxious . . . and whichever way it 
goes now . . . most annoyed. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 37 

Mrs. Torpenhouse shakes her head. She almost seems 
to imply that this isn't genuine annoyance, but what 
she says is: — 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I can*t take any real interest in 
politics, so I just don't pretend. 

LORD SILVER WELL. [^ Certain well-known sort of vehe- 
mence growing on him7\ At the very best the majority will 
have been cut down . . . cut to nothing . . . cut to ribbons. 
In the simplest way she tries to recall him . . . to 
himself. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. But why should you be nervous of 
the House of Lords when you've been a real member of 
Parliament all these years? 

LORD siLVERWELL. [Who conscicntiously will not be re- 
called.'] My position over this election is a very awkward 
one. Did you read the papers this morning? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis reads both the papers at 
breakfast. 

He begins to perambulate the room, stiffly, in his riding 
breeches, for greater emphasis. 
LORD SILVERWELL. Of course they're sick about it . . . 
in spite of that one ballot box and our peculiar hopes on a 
recount. It's been a safe seat ever since 1886, the second 
time I held it for them. I promised them it was a safe seat 
when they offered me the barony. And now if my own 
son's to lose it ... ! What could be more awkward? 
" They'' seems to be not the public generally, nor even the 
electors of Cuttleton, but some higher, more mysterious 
power. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Ycs . . . I'm afraid I don't under- 
stand. 

Short of someone who understands better than you do, 
the most consoling thing is to meet someone who doesn't 
understand at all. Lord Silverwell is quieted, and, 
pausing in his walk, contemplates her garden basket 
with a sad but not unfriendly eye. 



38 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. One ought to pick them first thing 
in the morning . . . but I can't get up so early as I could once. 
LORD siLVERWELL. £Moodily: perhaps he thinks of mush- 
room picking as a boy^i We grow them in a cellar. 
Mrs. Torpenhouse's face lights up. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. There's Lewis putting his stick in 
the umbrella stand. 

But it is Noel Wychway who comes in. The Honour- 
able Noel Wychway, in full etiquette he is, but only 
for the past three weeks, and he will always drop that 
silly snobbish-sounding prefix when he can. noel is 
thirty or a little more. He is an example of what the 
good things of life, lavishly given, from good food to good 
education, can do for any man. They can do much 
and he shows it. They cannot do more, and he, before 
all people, knows it. He greets Mrs. Torpenhouse 
punctiliously, and then, amusedly grim, faces his father, 
who at sight of him goes grimly glum. 
. NOEL. How d'y do, Mrs. Torpenhouse? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Well, Noel? 

NOEL. One! 

LORD SILVERWELL. Against you? 

NOEL. Yes. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [With some solemnity. 2 I'm damned! 
Mrs. Torpenhouse will excuse me. 

NOEL. It's not your fault, father . . . and I'm damned. 
Mr. Torpenhouse comes in. Lord Silverwell pounces on 
him. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Lewis, Can we petition? One can 
always prove bribery, if one wants to. 

NOEL. No ... let it be. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [Protestant: pathetic."} But it leaves 
me in such an impossibly awkward position. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Will you havc some tea? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Yes, Mary. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Thank you. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 39 

NOEL. £As he sits and stretches: a man who knows the worst !\ 
By one vote, mind you! Two hundred and twenty-five in 
that extra box . . . We were fifteen to the good last night, 
not fourteen. ... I wish the fool had never found it. One 
vote! ! 

LORD siLVERWELL. [With a sudden snap.~\ I wish I 
knew whose vote. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. And havc you really not got in for 
good and all? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Who has hovered near the door. 2 I'll 
tell . . . what is her name? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Kate. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. . . . to bring tea. I must wash . . . 
that committee room table . . . 

He disappears. A man past sixty; not handsome, not 
even distinguished. But there is something in his face ^ 
a touch of enthusiasm, which would mark him out from 
common men. There is a touch of music in his voice, 
a falling cadence which lets you know that sometimes 
his thoughts are on far-of things. One understands 
how a woman would marry him. At this moment the 
woman who did marry him says — 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis is very upset. 
LORD SILVERWELL. \With suddcn violence^ Braxted let 
us down. Have you seen his letter? 
NOEL. No . . . confound his letter. 
LORD SILVERWELL. Lewis has it. [Then he gets up again, 
to resume his perambulating vehemence^ That shows you 
the personal attention one ought to pay to a small constitu- 
ency. I did thirty years ago. I spent a solid three years 
tackling every man in the place. Then I got careless. . . . 
But that shouldn't have made you careless. No, it's not your 
fault ... I daresay Lewis remembers ... he should have 
put you in the way of it. 

NOEL. Dash it . . . I've had three weeks . . . not much 
more. 



40 VOTE BY BALLOT 

LORD siLVERWELL. One vote ! I suspect Braxted. If 
Braxted had voted straight . . . and you'd been elected 
by the Mayor . . . that would have been bad enough . . . 
a casting vote! 

NOEL. Well . . . Braxted came down for the re-count 
. . . and he told me . . . not that he need have told me . . . 
that out of personal regard for you ... no kindness to 
me at all . . . he deliberately spoiled his voting paper . . . 
so there. 

LORD SILVERWELL. {With One sweeping gesture rejecting 
Braxted.^ I don't believe him. He went against you. 
You read his letter? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. £ln her soft voice!] Lewis thinks 
Mr. Braxted is far too violent to mean anything he says. 

Then comes a paternal-filial scrap. Quite good-natured; 
the usual happy family thing. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I never liked your Address. 

NOEL. You didn't expect me to copy your Address. 

LORD SILVERWELL. My Address got me in last January. 

NOEL. You got in last January because you'd always 
got in. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I'm not blaming you. 
The maid arrives with tea. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Here's tea ... we shall all feel 
better then. 

LORD SILVERWELL. {Forgivingly.] Your meetings were 
excellent . . . Lewis assures me. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. And you never went to one of them? 

LORD SILVERWELL. A Peer of the Realm . . . you see . . . 
{He has to take breath after it.] may take no part in an elec- 
tion. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Not cvcn to help his own son! 
That isn't natural, is it? 

She begins to administer tea; a priestess of consolation. 
Torpenhouse comes back. But he is still troubled and 
the trouble seems deep in him. He takes a chair apart. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 41 

LORD siLVERWELL. Lord Mount-Toiby may have been 
too radical for them. 

NOEL. Nobody else was radical enough. 

LORD SILVERWELL. He speaks well. Got that letter of 
Braxted's, Lewis? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I tore It up ... I didn't know you 
wanted it. 

LORD SILVERWELL. There may have been a dozen other 
men who did as he said he'd do. ... 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Spoilt his paper on purpose ... he 
told us. . . . 

NOEL. {Excusably irritable in defeat under his careless 
mask^^ When he knew we'd lost! 

LORD SILVERWELL. If he says so, I daresay he did. With 
all his faults he's a feeling fellow. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. {Thankful to hear a soft word.2 
Oh, yes. 

LORD SILVERWELL. If a dozen voted Tory because you 
weren't Radical enough for 'em . . . silly fools! . . . and 
hadn't the honesty to tell you so as Braxted told you, 
still a hundred men calling themselves Tories must have 
gone for you because you're . . . because you were. . . . 

NOEL. Your son! 

LORD SILVERWELL. [With a vicious snap: he is rapidly 
evolving some real feelings about this afair7\ Well . . . not 
a smooth-headed carpet-bagger of a Conservative penny-a- 
lining barrister, whatever else you are! I'm sorry to seem 
upset, dear Mrs. Torpenhouse. . . . 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Give Lord Silverwell his tea, Lewis. 

LORD SILVERWELL. . . . But my position with the Party 
Whips is ... I do assure you ... a most impossibly 
awkward one. [_And now we can place the mysterious 
''They''.'] 

NOEL. It's no use, father . . . yes, sugar, please . . . 
we thought we knew the town and every man's politics in it. 
Well ... we didn't. I shan't stand again. 



42 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. £As she ministers tea to poor Noel. "2 
Don't say that. 

LORD siLVERWELL. ^With a sudden serious rectitude.^ 
Lewis, I hope all the men at the works voted straight. I 
don't mean those whose opinions we know. There are 
Tories and Socialists . . . and I've never attempted to 
penalize a man for his political opinions. But all those that 
aren't anything in particular. If I didn't think they'd 
voted like one man for you, Noel, I ... I should be very 
deeply hurt. 

NOEL. You'd have won the seat yourself, Torpenhouse. 
Torpenhouse gives him a quite scared look. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. No. 

NOEL. Well, you've been a first-rate chairman of Com- 
mittee, and I'm sorry I've let you all down. 

LORD SILVERWELL. ^As he stirs his tea.2 If Noel won't 
stand again I really think you'd better, Lewis. 

NOEL. [_In settled relief.^ 1 won't. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [With that same almost scared look^ 
I couldn't. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, Lewis! 

LORD SILVERWELL. Yes . . . why not? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I couldn't . . . afford it. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Now I kuow what you can afford and 
what you can't. 

NOEL. [Encouragingly!]^ You stand. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. There are reasons why I couldn't. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis, I think it'd be nice for you to 
stand ... if only one felt sure you wouldn't be elected. 
The charming inconsequence of this lets Torpenhouse 
relax to saying genially . . . 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. My dear Mary, don't talk nonsense. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. [She smilcs gravely at him/\ That 
may sound silly . . . but it isn't. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [With some decision!] Lewis, our 
factory has made Cuttleton what it is, and my estate is the 



VOTE BY BALLOT 43 

biggest in the County ... no credit to me, of course, but 
that's so. If I can't any longer sit for the place and Noel 
really means now to go and work up the South American 
branch . . . 

NOEL. For a couple of years. 

LORD siLVERWELL. \^Truly a patron and a peerJ] . . . who 
else should have the seat but you? You're my man of 
business . . . you're more than that by a long way. 
Confound it all, if it had been your money instead of mine 
in the beginning you'd be Lord Something or other now, and 
I should be . . . ! ! And I strongly suspect Cuttleton 
knows it too. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. £As she glows witk gentle pride.'} 
Lewis, when you're asked like that I'm sure you ought to, 
just to show people that it's true . . . some of it ... of 
course, only some. But if it comes to being elected and 
spending all your time in that draughty stuffy House of 
Commons we came to see you in, Sir Alfred . . . there, how 
one does slip back! . . . well, his health wouldn't stand 
that. And then of course I should have to interfere. 

Torpenhouse hows his head and his voice seems to come 
from rather far away. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I'm too old. I wish I weren't. 

LORD SILVERWELL. We must get the seat back. 

NOEL. Don't be depressed about my losing it, Torpen- 
house. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I wish I could begin my life over 
again. I'm very unhappy . . . I . . . I . . . 

With no more warning he hursts into tears and sits 
there crying like a child. The rest of them are really 
alarmed. 

LORD SILVERWELL. My dear Lewis! 

NOEL. My dear Torpenhouse ... for heaven's sake! 
It hasn't been your fault. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, Lewis, I knew the strain'd be 
too much for you. He's had nothing to eat to-day. 



44 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. It's not the strain. I'm all right. 
Let me alone. 

He extricates himself from their petting; moves to a 

chair further apart still; turns away, his shoulders 

heaving. Lord Siherwell is puzzled and tactful. 

LORD siLVERWELL. Elections . . . very wearing things. 

We'll talk of something else. Give me some more tea, my 

dear lady. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. He's not strong. 

Suddenly Torpenhouse turns back. There are un- 
ashamed tears on his cheeks; one quite ridiculously 
smears his nose. But his face is vivid and his eyes and 
his voice are very steady indeed. 
MR. TORPENHOUSE. Wychway! 
NOEL. Yes. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. No, no . . . your father . . . Lord 
Silverwell ... I want to call you by your old name. . . . 
LORD SILVERWELL. ^Encouragingly, as a nurse to a child.2 
So you shall. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I havc been a pillar of Liberalism in 
this town for thirty years . . . haven't I? 
LORD SILVERWELL. All honour to you. 
MR. TORPENHOUSE. Be sure your sin will find you out. 
His voice rings aloud. But then his knees seem to give 
way and he sits of a heap gaping at them. Lord Silver- 
well gapes in return. Noel is puzzled. Mrs. Torpen- 
house soothes him . . . what she says is no matter . . . 
in her soft way. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. My dear, you're very excited. 
NOEL. ^T'rying ironic humour as a tonic/\ Well, it has 
at last . . . but only by one vote. 

Emotion seizes torpenhouse again^ but this time 
rebellious, incoherent. 
MR. TORPENHOUSE. To-day? Ah! . . . but until to- 
day . . . the day of triumph! Oh, it's very difficult! 
This is my hour! ! 



VOTE BY BALLOT 45 

LORD siLVERWELL. My dear old chap, you're not well. 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, Lewis ... do sit down. 
MR. TORPENHOUSE. Mary, I shall confess all . . . with 
pride . . . oh, with such pride. Noel . . . you have some 
right to complain. 

NOEL. Not at all . . . take it easy . . . better by your^ 
self. See you to-morrow. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. No; I mayn't have the courage. 
Noel . . . you're a good fellow. ... In a sense it never 
mattered with your father . . . and even now he won't 
understand. Boys together! 

Ee is standing, waving his arms at them. He looks 
very queer indeed. 
LORD SILVERWELL. Of coursc we Were! 
MRS. TORPENHOUSE. [Going to him, her tears starting now. 2 
Oh, . . . Lewis! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Dou't hold me! Don't cry, Mary. 
It was my vote. 

There is a silence: and the two other men look at what 
he has said {in a sense) as they might at some queer 
object that had marvellously dropped through the ceil- 
ing. 
NOEL. What d'you mean? 

LORD SILVERWELL. My dear Lewis . . . what do you 
mean? 

Torpenhouse is attacking them now. He shakes his 
fist. 
MR. TORPENHOUSE. I needn't have done it. Couldn't 
I have spoiled my paper? The Mayor would have voted 
you in. No, no! 

LORD SILVERWELL. Do you mean you voted the wrong 
way by mistake yesterday? 

NOEL. [His eyebrows askew.^ I don't think that's what 
you mean, is it? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [,Erect, heroic.2 As a Tory I have 
never fully approved of the secrecy of the ballot. . . • 



46 ^ VOTE BY BALLOT 

LORD SILVERWELL. {With a wild effort to capture the situa- 
tion^ Lewis, if you're ill let your wife send for the doctor. 
If you're not, let's understand what it is you're trying to 
say . . . and stop talking nonsense. 

But Torpenhouse only looks at him now in the kindest 
way and shakes his head. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Wychway, we have been good friends. 
I have served you faithfully ... I don't regret that. Noel, 
I am quite calm now and I think it my duty, as chairman of 
your committee, to inform you that yesterday I deliberately 
voted against you. 

LORD SILVERWELL. You're uot scrious. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. My votc was serious. 

NOEL. \_Grimly.'} It was. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [_To the listening earth; and the pO' 
litical heavens as well3 But why? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. For couscicnce' sake. 

LORD SILVERWELL. {With a certain direct dignity; after 
all, he is the man^s chiefs! Lewis, explain yourself. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. It isn't casy. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Lewis, don't you think you'd better 
go and lie down? 

LORD SILVERWELL. {Tartly!^ No, I don't think he had. 
Torpenhouse now faces his friend and the situation 
very squarely. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Lord Silverwell . . . 

LORD SILVERWELL. Don't caU me that. I mean, don't 
say it in that tone. Hang it, man, you queered the elec- 
tion! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You probably have never known 
what a moral difficulty was. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Havcn't I? Why haven't I, pray? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. * Well, you'vc been so successful. And 
look at the money you've made. . . . 

LORD SILVERWELL. I havc made it honestly. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You see? I said so. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 47 

' — — - . 

NOEL. [Cutting in coolly; sharply a little, though^ But 
what have I done to land you in such a queer dilemma? 

MR. TOKPENHOUSE. [With perfect simplicity^ Personally 
I am so sorry, Noel. . . . 

NOEL. No, believe me, Torpenhouse, personally I'm not 
very much annoyed . . . though I could easily pretend to 
be. And politically I'm quite excited. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Thank you. 

NOEL. You disapproved of my special little brand of 
opinion? Well, so did my father. He thought my Address 
horrid. It was lucky he'd lost his vote. 

LORD SILVER WELL. Don't joke about this, Noel. 

NOEL. But I think we'd better. [For an air of extreme 
discomfort is gradually settling on them all.~\ Come on, some- 
body must explain. You felt for the party's sake, that you 
couldn't withdraw from the chairmanship ... so you paid 
me out privately. I quite understand. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Ahuost to Mmself it seems.'} Oh . . . 
but I'm punished. 

LORD siLVERWELL. Punished! Noel's punished. Let me 
tell you, Torpenhouse, that you have behaved dishonourably. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. [With proper decorum, if they are 
to disgrace themselves.'} Lewis . . . shall I go? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Firmly^ I have. But you don't 
know how ... or begin to. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Then we'll hear the worst, please. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Glowing at him now.} I am a Poli- 
tician. 

NOEL. So we find. No ... I beg your pardon. [NoeVs 
nerves are really a little strained and irony is his only vent 
for them.} 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. A serious politician. For thirty years. 
I have voted straight. That at least is a comfort. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Do you mean to say that all these 
years you have been voting against me? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Yes, of course. 



48 VOTE BY BALLOT 

LORD siLVERWELL. And been Chairman of my Com- 
mittee 1 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Well, as chairman of your committee 
. . . and your man of business ... I always got you in. 
What are you grumbling at? 

LORD SILVERWELL. This is Unbelievable! 

NOEL. No. Get it all clear, Torpenhouse . . . and you'll 
feel better. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Yesterday it was sheer force of habit, 
Noel, nothing else. I felt so sure you were safe ... by a 
hundred or two at least. I never stopped to think. And 
now, at last, when I'd given up all hope of this damned 
constituency ever doing the right thing ... to beat you . . . 
to have my better nature triumph in spite of itself! And by 
my own single vote! ! Mary, God has been very merciful 
to me. 

Caught in this sudden whirlpool of feeling and thoughtj 
he almost breaks down again. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, hush, Lcwis, don't say things 
like that. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Torpenhouse, this is very serious. 
IVe always known there was a kink in you. You've had 
strange tastes ... in books and things like that. But I 
never thought it was a moral kink. 

NOEL. My dear father, this needs understanding. Don't 
lumber us up with injured feelings. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Nocl, please stop treating me as if 
I were a fool. If ever you have to look back on thirty years 
of a friend's deception . . . I'm sorry, it's a harsh word, 
but I cannot take this lightly. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [_Gently7\ My friend, I've never 
taken it lightly, if that's any satisfaction to you. You see, 
you haven't a conscience. . . . 

LORD SILVERWELL. [_Exploding7\ I will not be talked to 
like this. No moral difficulties . . . lumbered up with 
feelings ... no conscience! 



VOTE BY BALLOT 49 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Yes, but I hadn't finished. A tor- 
menting conscience, like mine. 

LORD SILVER WELL. Can you wonder! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I have wondered all my life why Spirits 
should possess us. 

LORD siLVERWELL. [^His eyes inclined to holt; hut he tries 
the heavily ironic, a leaf from Noel's book.li Dare I say, 
Keep to the point? Dare I hint that perhaps you don't 
know either what you're talking about? With Noel looking 
at me? No! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Why could I give my body and mind 
to working up the boot trade for you . . . and never my 
soul at all? 

LORD SILVERWELL. I ncvcr askcd for it. I've never 
given my soul to the boot trade. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You have. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I have not. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Why, whatever else has made it? 
My disinterested business ability! Is that the price of suc- 
cess the god of this world asks? 

LORD SILVERWELL. We wiU not argue that. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Dear Lewis, what did you want to 
give your soul to? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Dear Mary, I've never discovered. 
That's why I'm a failure at sixty-three. {Then to his old 
friend7\ I made you a Liberal. . . . 

LORD SILVERWELL. You did not make me a Liberal. ^It 
is a relief to him to scrap. "] 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I did. It was wrong of me, but I 
did it deliberately. For it seemed the only thing you could 
be. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I was always a Liberal. You helped 
put me into Parliament. I've said so . . . and thanked 
you, more than once. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You Were a voter. . . . 

LORD SILVERV/ELL. Well, I voted Liberal so . . . 



50 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You voted any way. \^And then 
with sudden extraordinary fire.'} Don't interrupt me when for 
once in my life I'm saying something serious about myself. 

LORD SILVER WELL. \^In cheerful amazement. 2 Oh, go on! 
I'm the culprit here, I suppose. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I was a Tory. That meant something 
to me. It was a faith ... a creed! 

LORD SILVER WELL. Then you could have stuck to it. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I was Very fond of you. 

LORD SILVER WELL. I should have appreciated your inde- 
pendence of spirit. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Would you? I wondcr. You're 
such a healthy man, Wychway, and everything agrees with 
you . . . and you do like people to agree with you too. 
For Heaven has made you yourself as nearly all of a piece 
as possible. It takes perfect machinery to do that . . . 
with our boots, doesn't it? But I'm a cobbled bit of goods. 
I've always known it. And that has made me an unhappy 
man all my life. 

Mrs. Torpenhouse sits there, forgotten. At this her 
lip quivers. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, Lewis! 

Torpenhouse has not forgotten her. He turns and 
says with real chivalry, though whimsy follows close. . . , 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I reverence my life with you, my 
dear . . . and thanks to the beauty that's in you ... it 
has grown into being a good habit instead of a bad one. But 
it's a habit, Mary, now. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. \^Simplyr[ Do you remember saying 
to me years ago when you'd had bronchitis . . . and be- 
fore the nurse too . . . that there were things about you 
I must never want to understand? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Qwaiw%.] Ycs . . . before the 
nurse ! 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. And I went away and I cried and 
cried. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 51 

ME. TORPENHOUSE. [_Apostrophising himself^ Brute! 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. And then I thought: Well, it's only 
like having a husband and a visitor in one. And I haven't 
minded a bit; though I've never dared say so till now . . . 
when we're all old people . . . except Noel. 

NOEL. [^Loving her; who could help itP^ Noel won't tell. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. {_Stoutly^ I don't feel old. And 
sometimes I feel wicked. I'm tempted to go kissing pretty 
girls. And if it wasn't they'd dislike it . . . for I'm not 
much to look at . . . I'm not sure I hadn't better kiss one 
and have done with it. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. ^Encr SO fuischievously.'^ You may 
try, if you'll tell me whether she lets you. 

Torpenhouse, quite master of himself now, jovial 
actually. . . . 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Well . . . and what are you thinking 
of, old Wychway? 

LORD siLVERWELL. [Z^ the Spirit of it. 2 You are! A 
Tory at heart ... a true Tory, by Jove! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Why, we're all wrapped in hypoc- 
risies, fold on fold! So shall I set up now as a libertine 
country squire? I resign my place with you, of course, 
Wychway. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [^Attacked thus in quite a new place. "^ 
What? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Don't you waut me to? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Must you ? I supposc you must. 
Dear me, this is very vexing. 

NOEL. No, no! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Thirty years' heartless deception! 

LORD SILVERWELL. Well, I must be allowed to feel it. 

MR. TOPJ'ENHOUSE. That isu't the reason. I want to 
resign. 

LORD SILVERWELL. You w an t to! No, really I think that 
is too bad. Just when I've taken the peerage and Noel's 
going away. Look here: what you have done is unforgivable. 



52 VOTE BY BALLOT 

But after all politics are only politics, and now, by Jove, 
instead of asking me to forgive you, you make matters worse 
by resigning. We can't do without you, and you know it. 
Put your foot down, Mrs. Torpenhouse. Whatever else 
has happened . . . why cap it by trying to break up the 
whole system of things like this? \^He finishes breathless, hut 
justified^ 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. {J¥Uh judgment.2 Lewis must stop 
working sometime. 

LORD siLVERWELL. I think at least it was for me to 
object to your remaining. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. {With meaning . . . ] But I know 
you won't . . . you see. 

LORD SILVERWELL. [[ . . . wMch is utterly missed^ No, 
I am prepared to face a great deal for your sake. I am 
stupid enough to be very fond of you, Lewis. . . . 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Bless you. 

LORD SILVERWELL. {^Piling it on, quite sincerely!} I 
thought we had been something more than master and . . , 
agent. I thought we had been friends. If I have been 
mistaken. . . . 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You've uot been mistaken. 

NOEL. [Who mistrusts these competing emotions!} What is 
it you're prepared to face, father? 

LORD SILVERWELL. [AssumUig importance!] Well, I have 
been thinking as well as one could in these trying circum- 
stances. Must the whole town know of this? 

NOEL. \lAgape!\. Certainly not. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Then ought we to tell each member 
of the Committee ... in confidence? 

NOEL. That comes to the same thing, doesn't it? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [A little shamefaced now!\ I don't 
mind hanging on as chairman for a bit . . . say, till the 
next election's in sight. 

LORD SILVERWELL. No, that seems to me a little immoral. 

NOEL. What's worrying you, father? 



VOTE BY BALLOT 53 

LORD siLVERWELL. For conscience' sake, ought there not 
to be some sort of public announcement ? 

NOEL, \lVith the utmost impatience.~\ What on earth 
good will that do? 

LORD SILVERWELL. [^Parental; fine-spirited i^ It will be 
very painful to me . . . very galling. I may be made to 
appear almost ridiculous. But it is of Lewis I have been 
thinking. When in doubt, make a clean breast of things. 
It seems to me that this is a public matter. So somebody 
should be told. It may not so much matter who . . . and 
not the whole truth perhaps. . . . 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [Curtly7\ I shall tell nobody else. 

LORD SILVERWELL. That might perhaps relieve my mind, 
Lewis, but are you sure that on general principles you are 
not wrong? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Look here! Is the ballot secret . . , 
or is it not? 

LORD SILVERWELL. That sccms to me hardly a subject 
at the moment . . . either for joke or argument. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Wychway, you're so trying when 
you're pompous. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I am not pompous. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I beg your pardon ... I shouldn't 
have said it. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Nonscuso . . . you kuow you can 
say what you like to me . . . you always have. But 
you've no right to tell me I'm pompous. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Who wants to stand in a white sheet 
with his real and sham opinions hung round him? Confound 
it . . . set me the example. Withdraw your poster that 
Wychway's boots are the best. Advertise what we really 
think of them. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Wychway's boots are the best. 

MR. TORPEi^mousE. Then why don't you wear 'em? 

LORD SILVERWELL. If we must go into details . . . be- 
cause one of my feet is larger than the other and it would be 



54 VOTE BY BALLOT 

absurdly extravagant to have a special pattern manufactured. 
Wychway's boots are the best that can be made in the cir- 
cumstances for the price, and any sensible man reading the 
advertisement reads that into it. 

NOEL. I've been wearing 'em at all our meetings ... on 
the platform . . . and sticking 'em well out. But I don't 
like the shape. 

LORD siLVERWELL. My dear Noel, we have twenty-four 
different shapes. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I've wom them for thirty years. 
And whenever the spring weather comes they hurt me . . . 
not at other times, 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I havc tried my best to wear them 
. . . but you don't make a point of ladies' shoes, do you? 

LORD SILVERWELL. No. Women, my dear Mrs. Tor- 
penhouse . . . who purchase our class of goods, seem to 
prefer to pay seven and six or ten and six for a thoroughly 
showy, shoddy article. We make a few ... to satisfy our 
retailers, but I have always given instructions for that line 
never to be ... as we say . . . pressed. We are wandering 
hopelessly from the subject. 

NOEL. There's one supreme happiness I could get out 
of this situation. Torpenhouse . . . stand at the next elec- 
tion on the other side . . . your right side. By Jove . . . 
if you will I'll come back and fight you and watch you beat 
me. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Noel . . . don't mock me.] 

NOEL. I'm serious. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. You're uot sixty-three. You've not 
wasted your life. 

LORD SILVERWELL. \^Sharply7}^ In my service? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. [_As shavply . . . throwing it back. "2 
Yes. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Torpenhouse, you'd better stop. 
Noel, we'd better go. You're beginning to say things 
you'll be sorry for. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 55 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Not till to-Hiorrow . . . when you'll 
have forgotten them. 

LORD siLVERWELL. Thank you. Of all the queer sug- 
gestions you have made this afternoon . . . that seems to 
me quite the queerest. I think I may say without exaggera- 
tion ... I am doing my best not to be pompous . . , that 
this unhappy business will leave its mark on me. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. What sort of a mark? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Had we not better let things rest for 
the moment? We are all very upset. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. But I Want you to understand a 
little, dear old friend, how the whole thing happened. All it 
ever meant to you and this sweating little town of yours 
to have a seat in Parliament and you sitting in it was as far 
from the statesmanship I'd kneel and pray for as the rag 
heap on which his poem will be printed is from the soul of 
the man who sings it. I've watched you in Parliament 
shout and chatter about this measure and that . . . yes, and 
I've shouted and chattered outside Parliament too ... it 
has been so easy . . . taking our tune from those worthy 
people who are given the country to govern and kindly 
give us something to chatter and shout for while they're 
so busy-bodily doing it. From one decade to another . . . 
the same old tune . . . different words to it. It really 
didn't seem to me that it could hurt England at all to have 
you in Parliament. . . . Honestly, I don't think it ever 
has. . . . 

LORD SILVERWELL. Thank you. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, if having you and five or six 
hundred men like you talking there could hurt her . . . well, 
only by God's mercy could she be saved anyhow! And I 
owed so much to you, Wychway, in those old days . . . 
and I do now . . . that I felt I owed it to you first of all 
just to be silent when they asked you to stand. I dug a pit 
for myself then. I think if we'd waited a few years the 
Other side might have asked you too. 



56 VOTE BY BALLOT 

LORD SILVER WELL. I phould have refused. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Why? We could have kept you 
unattached. Of course I meant at first to keep out of the 
vile business altogether. But that was no use. You 
wouldn't even try to get on without me. I wondered if 
I could make you a Tory. But that didn't do. You 
hadn't the stamina or the style. So I had to help you dis- 
cover that you were a Liberal. Once I thought I'd declare 
right against you. . . . Perhaps it would have braced you 
up and made you take things seriously. 

LORD SILVER WELL. Take things seriously! 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. What I call seriously. But it was 
that ticklish Home Rule time. I'd have smashed you 
politically if I had. You were wobbling badly over it, you 
know, and it wouldn't bear wobbling over. So of course 
I couldn't. And my fraud grew and grew . . . and all 
my salvation when the day came was to fold up my little 
Tory vote so tight and drop it gently in. Well . . . 
Newman could find comfort telling beads at a miracle- 
working altar in Naples. It all seems unreal now ... as 
I look back on it. 

LORD SILVER WELL. Lewis, I M^ouder at you . . . you stiU 
show a most twisted sense of things ... I must say it. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I have a twisted sense of things. 
I told you so. I am the crooked man . . . whose life's a 
crooked mile ... he earns a crooked sixpence . . . and 
climbs a crooked stile . . . into a straighter world for him, 
he always hopes. 

LORD siLVERWELL. Have you ever done a thing for me 
. , . have I ever asked you to . . . which was not straight 
as a die? I wish to be told. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. In One word? 

LORD SILVERWELL. Yes or No. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. White or black . . . Liberal, Tory. . . 
true or false. If only God had made you such a world . . . 
and given it to you once for all . . . why then perhaps that 



VOTE BY BALLOT 57 

honest best you've always done would be enough to keep it 
straight! But under our clothes and in your boots we're 
queer God's creatures still, 

LORD siLVERWELL. Frankly, it all sounds to me mere 
rubbish. But if that's how you feel . . . why you couldn't 
abstain from voting, I can't think . . . that would have 
been bad enough. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I did One year. I simply couldn't 
stomach the other man that time. 

LORD siLVERW^ELL. Then if you ever let it be a personal 
question, the least you could have done was to vote for me. 
No, Lewis, I take that very badly. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. That year I was tempted to vote for 
you. You were turning so nicely that year . . . but I 
knew you'd still go the wrong way at Westminster. ... So 
I didn't. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Turning? 

NOEL. Tory. 

LORD SILVERWELL. What on earth do you mean? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, you've been turned for some 
years now. It has quieted my conscience a little . . . 
when I grew sure you would. That's why they've made 
you a peer . . . and for other reasons. So that it shouldn't 
be noticed. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Are you serious? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Of course. 

LORD SILVERWELL. I havc nevcr been so insulted in all 
my life. 

NOEL. My dear father! 

LORD SILVERWELL. Torpenhousc . . . you will apologise. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I'm afraid I can't. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Then we part. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I thought We'd better. 

NOEL. That seems a pity, though, doesn't it, if you're 
really in political agreement for the very first time? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I doubt if we should find quite that. 



58 VOTE BY BALLOT 

Mine is hardly the official Tory mind. Why should it be? 
But he of course. . . . 

LORD siLVERWELL. Mrs. Torpenhousc . . . Good-bye. 
As I prefer not to be discussed like this in my own presence, 
I will remove the temptation. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. We must part as good friends as 
possible. 

LORD SILVERWELL. Whether, my dear fellow, it is worth 
while our doing anything but forget all the nonsense we've 
been talking, I . . . I . . . will consider to-morrow. You're 
an unaccountable chap, you know. You always were, 
confound you. Noel, if you've your car here I'll drive 
home. 

NOEL. I'll walk. I want a walk. 

LORD SILVERWELL. See you to-morrow, Lewis . . . see 
you to-morrow. 

Lord Siherwell goes. 

NOEL. I'll tuck him in warm. You ought to lie down, 
you're a bit shaken. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Just a bit. 

NOEL. We must have you in Parliament. Stand . . . 
somewhere else . . . next January, It'd relieve your mind 
. . . and if you did get in they'd be the better for having 
you. Heaven knows. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. What, join that mob of vulgar dema- 
gogues who now prostitute the name of Tory to the nation! 
Thank you. 

NOEL. Yes, after a meeting . . . after a glorious rally 
to our great Principles I used to feel something like that 
about my lot. That's really why I'm not standing again. 
But then I'm nothing particular. I'd be one of the mob . . . 
just as he was. You wouldn't. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I shouldn't havc been . . . perhaps. 

NOEL. Good-bye, Mrs. Torpenhouse. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Good-bye. 
Noel goes. 



VOTE BY BALLOT 59 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. My dear, I felt quite frightened for 
you. Are you better? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Better than I've been for years. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oughtn't you to have done it? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Done what, Mary? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Voted wrong. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I did not vote wrong. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Well . . . right. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. It was a matter for my own conscience. 
The ballot is secret. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I never thought it was really secret. 
I thought that was just pretence . . . like the other things. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I am prepared to advocate the 
abolition of the ballot. It compromises dignity and inde- 
pendence. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. And that would have saved aU this 
happening. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. It is, in itself, demoralising. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. YoU knoW . . . I'vC gOt SL VOtC. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Of course ... for that property at 
Swindlands. Only for the Borough Council. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Oh, not a real one. And I've never 
used it, for it seemed so silly. Is there a ballot there? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. YcS. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Then the next time I shall go over, 
it'll be such fun. D'you remember years ago when we 
promised to have no secrets? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I remember. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. You kept this from me. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. There are others, Mary. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I don't mind. I daresay it has been 
good for you. I shan't tell you about my ballot . . . ever. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. My dear. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Are you really going to leave Lord 
. . . Mr. Wychway? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. If he'll let me. 



60 VOTE BY BALLOT 

MRS, TORPENHOUSE. He ought to. I Wanted you to ten 
years ago. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. WcVe money enough. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE, Have we? Could we do anything 
with it? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. Would you like to travel? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Yes, perhaps. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. IVe meant and meant to go to Spain 
. . . not for a week or two ... for a year ... to live 
there a bit. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Why Spain? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I thought of it when I had to learn 
Spanish for our South American business. What a waste, 
otherwise! 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. I dou't think I should like Spain. 
But you go . . . why not? 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. What . . . after telling you I wanted 
to kiss pretty girls? 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. They wouldn't look at you. Yes, 
it was rather vulgar of you to say that . . . and before 
Noel. Young men think you mean these things. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. It's not such a journey to Spain . . . 
and if I didn't like it I could come back. You could have 
Eleanor to stay with you. Wychway won't let me leave. 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. You could make him. 

MR. TORPENHOUSE. I'm rather done up . . . I'll take 
a book to my room. . . . 

MRS. TORPENHOUSE. Yes . . . slecp's what you need . . . 
I do think. 

So Torpenhonse goes to his room to lie down. And he may 
fake that journey to Spain, and in the years that are left 
him he may do lots of other things. Why not indeed^ 



Farewell to the Theatre 

1916 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

This talk took place in Edward's office. He is a London solid' 
tor and his office reflects his standing. It is, that is to 
say, a musty dusty room in a house two hundred years 
old or so, now mercilessly chopped into offices. The 
woodwork is so old and cracked that new paint looks old 
on it and fresh paper on the walls looks dingy in a day. 
You may clean the windows (and it is sometimes 
done) but nothing will make them shine. The 
floor has been polished and stained and painted and 
scraped and painted again till it hardly looks like wood 
at all. And the furniture is old, not old enough to be 
interesting, old enough to be very respectable. There 
are some pictures on the wall. One is a good print of 
Lord Mansfield, one represents a naval battle, the third 
a nondescript piece of mountain scenery. How the 
battle and the nondescript came there nobody knows. 
One pictures some distracted client arriving with them 
under his arm. They were left to lean against the 
wall ten years or so; then a clerk hung them up. The 
newest thing in the room and quite the strangest seeming 
there is a photograph on the mantelpiece of Edward's 
daughter, and that has been here nine years or so, ever 
since she died. A pretty child. 

Well, the papers renew themselves and the room is full of them, 
bundles and bundles and bundles. They spread about 
poor Edward like the leaves of a forest; they lie packed 
close like last year's leaves and in time are buried 
deep like leaves of the year before last. His clerk 
knows what they all are and where everything is. He 
flicks a feather duster over them occasionally and has 
been observed to put some — very reluctantly — away, 

63 



64 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

Very reluctantly. For, after all, these are the fabric of 
a first-class practice and it is his instinct to have them 
in evidence. Edward has never thought about it. Thus 
was the room when his uncle walked out of it and he 
walked in and thus he will leave it in a few years for 
some junior partner. 
Note the signs then by which a lawyer marks himself above re- 
proach. Beware the businesslike well-polished office, 
clicking with machinery. There works a man who does 
not practice law so much as make a practice of it. 
Beware! 
Edward is at his desk. Wherever else is he, unless he rises 
wearily to stretch his long limbs before the fire? Thin, 
humorous and rather more than middle-aged, a sen- 
sitive, distinguished face. One likes Edward. 
His clerk shows in Dorothy Taverner. Everybody knows 
Miss Dorothy Taverner. The clerk beams at her 
with forgetful joy — shamelessly a t her while he tries 
to say to Edward, "Miss Taverner, sir.'' Then he 
departs. 
EDWARD. How punctual! 

DOROTHY. Twelve ten by the clock out there. Your note 
said eleven thirty. 

EDWARD. And I said "How punctual!" 

They shake hands like the oldest friends. He bends a 
little over her pretty hand. 
DOROTHY. You have no right to send for me at all when 
I'm rehearsing . . . and you know it. 
EDWARD. It was urgent. Sit down. 
DOROTHY. My dear Edward, nothing is more urgent 
than that my rehearsals should go right . . . and if I leave 
the company to the mercy of my understudy and this 
author-boy . . . though he's a nice author-boy . . . they 
don't. 
EDWARD. I'm sure they don't. 
DOROTHY. His beating heart tells him that we must all 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 65 

be bad actors because we don't live and move just like the 
creatures as he began thinking them into being. He almost 
weeps. Then I tell him God called him into collaboration 
fifty-three flying years too late as far as I'm concerned. 

EDWARD. Oh ... oh! 

DOROTHY. Fifty-four will have flown on November the next 
eighteenth. And that cheers us all up and we start again. 
Well, dear friend, you are fifty-seven and you . . . look 
it. Having made point pause for effect. Edward carefully 
places legal documents on one side. 

EDWARD. My dear Dorothy. ... 

DOROTHY. That tone means that a little business talk 
has now begun. Where's the rickety paper-knife that I 
play with? Thank you. 

EDWARD. Vernon Dix and . . . Boothby, is that the name 
of your treasurer? . . . paid me a formal visit yesterday 
afternoon. 

DOROTHY. Behind my back! What about? 

EDWARD. They complain you won't look at your balance 
sheets. . . . 

DOROTHY. [With cheerful charm.'} But they're liars. 
I look at them every week. 

EDWARD. . . . That you won't study them. 

DOROTHY. I'm studying a new part. 

EDWARD. They brought me a pretty full statement. I 
spent some hours over it. 

DOROTHY. More money wanted? 

EDWARD. They also brought me the estimate for this new 
play. 

DOROTHY. It'll be exceeded. 

EDWARD. Can more money be found? 

DOROTHY. We can search. 

EDWARD. You remember the last search. 

DOROTHY. The rent's paid till Christmas. 

EDWARD. Trust your landlord! 

DOROTHY. This play may do well. 



66 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

EDWARD. It may not. 

Dorothy gives a sigh. With an impatient gesture or 
two she takes off her hat and puts it obliviously on 
Edward's inkstand. She runs her fingers through her 
front hair, takes out a hairpin, and viciously replaces it. 
Signs, these are, that she is worried. 

DOROTHY. Yes, I remember the last search. Nearly 
kissed by old James Levison for Dear Art's sake. At my 
age! I wonder did he guess what an even choice it was 
between five thousand pounds and boxing his flat white 
ears. 

EDWARD. There was Shelburne's five thousand and Mrs. 
Minto's . . . 

DOROTHY. Well, I did kiss Lord Shelburne . . . he's a 
dear. Blue-eyed and over seventy or under twenty . . . 
then I always want to kiss them. Why? 

EDWARD. My eyes . . . alas . . . were never blue and 
never will be now. 

DOROTHY. Because I suppose then they don't care whether 
I do or not. All that money gone? I'm sorry. Mrs. 
Minto can't afford it. 

EDWARD. No, it's not all gone. And another five thousand 
will make you safe through this season. Another ten thou- 
sand unless you've very bad luck should carry you to Christ- 
mas . . . otherwise, if this new play isn't an instant success, 
you must close. 

Dorothy sits upright in her chair. 

DOROTHY. I have been in management for sixteen years. 
I have paid some dividends. "Dividends" is correct, I 
think. 

EDWARD. I keep a sort of abstract which reminds me 
of the fearful and wonderful way you have been financed. 

DOROTHY. Dear Edward, I should have cheated every- 
body but for you. 

EDWARD. I have also managed mostly to stop you from 
Qbeating yourself, Dorothy, it is odd that the people who 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 67 

put money in only to make some did often manage to make 
it out of you, while the people who stumped up for art's sake 
and your's never got anything at all. 

DOROTHY. I don't see anything odd in that. They got 
what they wanted. People always do. Some of them got 
the art . . . and one of them nearly got me. 

EDWARD. Why didn't you marry him, Dorothy? A good 
fellow ... a good match. 

DOROTHY. Oh, my dear! Marry him? Marry! Con- 
found him . . . why did he ask me? Now I can't ever ask 
him for a penny again. Yes ... on that bright Sunday 
morning the manageress was tempted, I won't deny. 

EDWARD. But the record of the past five years does not 
warrant your promising more dividends . . . and that's 
the truth. 

DOROTHY. Well . . . shall we hide the balance sheets 
away and shall I gird myself with boastfulness once 
more . . . once weary more? What is our record for Dear 
Art's Sake? Shakespeare . . .without scenery . . . Moliere, 
Holberg, Ibsen, Strindberg, Maeterlinck, Shaw, Hauptmann, 
d'Annunzio, Benevente, Giacosa, Parraval, Ostrowsky, 
Lavalliere, Tchekoff, Galsworthy, Masefield, Henniker 
and Borghese, Brieux, Yeats, van Arpent and Claudel. 
Some of it sounds quite old-fashioned already . . . and 
some has begun to pay. When a Knight of the Garter dies, 
you know, they proclaim his title over his tomb. You'll 
have to come to my burning, Edward, and through a trumpet 
of rolled-up balance sheets proclaim my titles to fame. 
"She, here deceased, did her duty by them, Shakespeare, 
Ibsen" . . . How I hate boasting! And boasting to 
millionaires to get money out of them. I'm as vain as a 
peacock still . . . but boasting I hate. 

EDWARD. Then consider. You can see through the pro- 
duction of this . . . what's it called? 

DOROTHY. The Salamander. Good title! 

EDWARD. If it fails . . . shut up . . . finally. 



68 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

DOROTHY. Yes ... I've been thinking of doing that, 
Edward. The Salamander won't succeed in the fine full 
business sense . . . though now I'm whispered that for the 
first time it most perversely may. 

EDWARD. Then what on earth are you putting it up for? 

DOROTHY. Because it's good enough . . . and then the 
next can be better. It won't succeed because I've only a 
small part in it. Say Egoist . . . say Actress. 

EDWARD. Wiser to keep out altogether. 

DOROTHY. And then it wouldn't succeed because the dear 
Public would think I didn't believe in it enough. Queer 
silly children the dear Public are, aren't they? For ten 
years now my acting is held to have grown steadily worse, 
so quite rightly they won't rush to plays with me in them. 
But then they won't have my plays with me out of them 
either. So what's a poor body to do? 

EDWARD. I don't hold that your acting has grown 
steadily worse. 

DOROTHY. Well . . . not steadily perhaps. But I never 
was steady, was I? And you don't like the parts I choose? 

EDWARD. Not when you hide yourself behind them. 

DOROTHY. I never do. 

EDWARD. Your old self! But I want you to finish with 
it all anyway. 

DOROTHY. Why? 

EDWARD. Because I fear I see heart-break ahead. 

DOROTHY. That you need never look to see ... for the 
best of reasons. 

EDWARD. You still do care ... far too much. 

DOROTHY. Do I hanker for the old thrill . . . like wine 
bubbling in one's heart . . . and then the stir in the audi- 
ence when ... on I came. Dear friend, you now prefer 
my acting ... off the stage. My well-known enthusiasm. 
It seems to me it rings more tinny every day. I'm glad it 
takes you in. Still, even that's only an echo . . . growing 
fainter since I died. 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 69 

EDWARD. My dear Dorothy. 

DOROTHY. Oh . . . but you knew I was dead. You 
own now to mourning me. You know the day and hour 
I died. Hypocrite ... I remember how you congratulated 
me on the tragic occasion . . . kissing my hand . . . you're 
the only man that does it naturally. Doesn't that ab- 
stract remind you when we produced The Flight of the 
Duchess? 

EDWARD. Many of us thought you very good. 

DOROTHY. Because I was far, far better than many a bad 
actress would have been. It is the queerest sensation, 
Edward, to be dead . . . though after a while you get quite 
used to it. Are you still alive, by the way? 

EDWARD. There is the same feeble flicker that there has 
ever been. 

DOROTHY. Burn on, dear Edward, bum on . . . that I 
may warm my poor hands sometimes at the flame you are. 

EDWARD. It can serve no better purpose. 

DOROTHY. No. ... so I'm sure I think. 

There falls a little silence. Then Edward speaks^ the 
more bitterly that it is without anger. 

EDWARD. Damn them! I'd damn their souls, if they had 
any. They've helped themselves to you at so much a time 
for . . . how many years? Dorothy . . . what have they 
ever given you in return? 

DOROTHY. Oh, if that were all my grievance I'd be a 
happy ghost this day. If I'd a thousand souls and they 
wanted them . . . the dear Public ... as they need them 
. . . God knows they do . . . they should have every one, 
for me. What does the law say, Edward? Is a soul private 
property? 

EDWARD. There are decisions against it. 

DOROTHY. Then I prefer your law to your religion. It's 
more public-spirited. 

EDWARD. My ancestral brand of religion, my dear, 
taught me to disapprove very strongly of the theatre. 



70 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

DOROTHY. And after watching my career you've found 
out why. How long have you been in this office, Edward? 

EDWARD. Thirty years, nearly. 

DOROTHY. The weight of them! Do you remember hav- 
ing tea at Richmond ... at The Roebuck at Richmond 
. . . when they'd offered you this billet and we talked 
wisely of the future? 

EDWARD. I do. 

DOROTHY. And I made you take it, didn't I? 

EDWARD. You did. 

DOROTHY. And I wouldn't marry you. 

Edward looks at her. One side of his mouth twitches 
a little. You might charitably call it a smile. But his 
eyes are smiling. 

DOROTHY. Don't say you didn't ask me to marry you. 

EDWARD. On that occasion? 

DOROTHY. Yes ... on that occasion, too. That's what 
one calls the Past, isn't it? How right I was . . . and what 
successes we've both been. 

EDWARD. My son Charles tells me that I have done 
very well. Do you know, I was moved to ask him the other 
night as we sat in the box whether he wasn't in love with you? 

DOROTHY. Do you think it's hereditary? 

EDWARD. He said he had been as a boy. 

DOROTHY. How old is he? 

EDWARD. Twenty-three. 

DOROTHY. Bless him! If young things love you, be quite 
sure that you're alive. I do regret sometimes. 

EDWARD. What did happen ... so suddenly? 

DOROTHY. What happens to the summer? You go 
walking one day and you feel that it has gone. 

EDWARD. You've been that to the Theatre. 

DOROTHY. A summer day ... a long, long summer day. 
Thank you. I prefer the sonnet which calls me a breath of 
spring. But truly he died ... oh, that lion's head of 
his! . . . before I was full blown. 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 71 

EDWAED. I know it by heart. 

DOROTHY. It's a good sonnet. 

EDWARD. It makes history of you. 

DOROTHY. And it never made me vain a bit because in- 
deed I knew it was true. Yes, I like to be standard 
literature. 

EDWARD. Easy enough for a poet to be public-spirited 
over you. 

DOROTHY. But from the time I was born, Edward, I believe 
I knew my destiny. And I've never quarrelled with it . . . 
never. I can't imagine how people get along if they don't 
know by sheer instinct what they're meant to be and do. 
What muddles they must make of life! 

EDWARD. They do . . . and then come to me for advice. 
It's how you told me to earn my living. 

DOROTHY. You Only tell them what the law says and 
what two and two make. That's all you ever tell me. 
But what I was alive for I have always known. So of course 
I knew when I died. 

EDWARD. Dorothy, my dear, it hurts me to hear you say it. 

DOROTHY. Why? We must all die and be born again 
. . . how many times in our lives? I went home that 
night and sent poor old Sarah to bed. And I didn't curse 
and break things . . . I'd always let myself do that a 
little on occasion ... it seemed so much more human . . . 
when I was alone ... oh, only when I was quite alone. 
But that night it had all been different . . . and I sat still 
in the dark, . . . and wondered . . . wondered what was 
to happen now. It's a frightening thing at best to lose 
your old and well-trained trusted self . . . and not know 
what the new one's going to be. 1 was angry. I had 
rehearsed the wretched play so well too. Why do people 
hink I've no brains, Edward? 

£dward. I suppose because you're so pretty. 

DOROTHY. Or perhaps because I don't use them for the 
things they were never meant to be used for. I've sometimes 



7^ FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

thought, since I can't act any longer, I might show the dear 
Public my rehearsing. That'd teach them! But there . . . 
I've come down to wanting to teach them. Time to 
retire. For, you see, after that night I wasn't born again. 
Something . . . didn't happen. And a weary business it 
has been finding out what. With the dear PubHc helping 
me to discover . . . hard on them, they've thought it. And 
you so patient with my passion to keep on failing . . . hard 
on you. For you've not understood. I've disappointed you 
these later years. Own up. 

EDWARD. If it's admitted that all my heart is your most 
humble servant I'll own up again to disapproving of the 
Theatre ... to disapproving most thoroughly of acting and 
of actors too . . . and to doubly disapproving when any 
new nonsense about them is added to life's difficulties. 

DOROTHY. Yes ... if life's so important! Well ... I 
have four hundred a year, safe, to retire on, haven't 
I, Edward? 

EDWARD. As safe as money can be. 

DOROTHY. I do think that money ought to learn to be 
safe. It has no other virtues. And I've got my Abbey. 

EDWARD. Milford Abbey is safe for you from every- 
thing but earthquake. 

DOROTHY. How Utterly right that I should end my days 
in a shanty built out of the stones of that great Abbey and 
buttressed up in its shell. 

EDWARD. Is it? 

DOROTHY. Oh. Edward, if you had but the artist's 
sense of the eternal fitness of things, you'd find it such a 
help. . . . 

EDWARD. ... To imagining Miss Dorothy leading the 
Milford monks a dance. 

DOROTHY. Well . . . their religion was not of this world, 
nor is mine. But yours is, dear Edward. Therefore the 
follies of art and saintliness must seem to you two sorts of 
folly and not one. St. Francis would have understood me. 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 73 

I should have been his dear sister Happiness. But you and 
the railway trains running on time would have puzzled him 
no end. 

EDWARD. What foolishness makes you say you're dead, 
my dear? 

DOROTHY. While ... if I'd lived the cautious life, I 
shouldn't be. If I'd sold my fancies for a little learning, 
virginity for a gold ring, likings for good manners, hate for 
silence ... if I ever could have learnt the world's way 
... to measure out gifts for money and thanks . . . well, 
I'd have been married to you perhaps, Edward. And then 
you never could have enjoyed my Imogen as you used 
to enjoy it. You used to say it was a perfect tonic. 

EDWARD. So it was! 

DOROTHY. Yes, dear, you never had a gift for subtle 
expression, had you? 

EDWARD. From the beginning I suppose you expected 
more of life than ever I could find in it. 

DOROTHY. Whatever I expected, my friend, I bargained 
for nothing at all. 

EDWARD. I'd like you to know this, Dorothy, that ... for 
all my rectangular soul, as you used to call it . . . when 
I asked you to marry me . . . 

DOROTHY. On which of those great occasions? 

EDWARD. On the various occasions I did ask you before 
I did . . . otherwise . . . marry. 

DOROTHY. I think there were five ... or six. I recall 
them with pride. 

EDWARD. But not with enough of it to ensure accuracy. 

DOROTHY. And was it never just for the sake of repeating 
yourself? 

EDWARD. No. When I was most ridiculously in love 
I used to think three times before I faced a life with you in 
that . . . 

DOROTHY. Well? 

EDWARD. That flowery wilderness which was your life. 



n FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

I knew there were no safe roads for me there. And yet I 
asked you . . . knowing that very well. 

DOROTHY. I'm glad ... for your sake . . . that you 
risked it. 

EDWARD. Glad, for your own, you didn't? 

DOROTHY. Did you really only marry her because I told 
you to? 

EDWARD. I fear so. 

DOROTHY. That was a wrong reason for doing the right 
thing. But I could not have one of the ablest men of his 
set in everything else said at his club to be sentimentalizing 
his life away about an actress ... I really couldn't. They 
told me she was desperately in love with you. And I 
never would have spoken to you again if you hadn't. 
Edward, it was never hard on her, was it? 

EDWARD. No, Dorothy, I hope and think it never was. 
I made her happy in every ordinary sense ... at least I 
felt she felt so, 

DOROTHY. And you did love her, didn't you, Edward? 

EDWARD. I shouldn't put this into words perhaps. I 
thought through those twenty-five years I gave her all the 
love that her love asked for. But the world of . . . folly, 
one calls it . . . into which your laugh had once lifted 
me . . . 

DOROTHY. Or was it wisdom? 

EDWARD. That, my dear Dorothy, was the problem you 
would never consent to try and solve. 

DOROTHY. She never could have liked me, Edward. 

EDWARD She thought you a great artist. She had judg- 
ment and taste, you know. 

DOROTHY. Yes , . . she thought me an attack of scarlet 
fever, let us say . . . and that it was a very beautiful scarlet. 

EDWARD. Dorothy, somehow that hurts. 

DOROTHY. I'm sorry. 

EDWARD. Some years before she died, her nature seemed 
to take a fresh start, as it were. It shot out in the oddest 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 75 

ways . . . over a home for horses and cooking reforms . . . 
and a most romantic scheme for sending strayed servant girls 
to Australia to get married. If there had been any genius 
in my love for her . . . would she have had to wait till 
forty-five and then find only those crabbed half-futile 
shoots of inner life begin to show? While her children 
were amused . . . and I was tolerant! For quite incurably 
middle-aged she was by then. . . . 

DOROTHY. Had she dreaded that? 

EDWARD. Not a bit. Not even in fun ... as we made 
such a fuss of doing. 

DOROTHY. Admirable Ethel! Clear-eyed and so firm 
footed on this spinning earth. And Life her duty ... to 
be punctually and cheerfully done. But over-trained a 
little, don't you think . . . just for her happiness sake. 

EDWARD. She didn't count her happiness. 

DOROTHY. She should have. 

EDWARD. She shouldn't have died when she did. 

DOROTHY. The doctors were fools. 

EDWARD. Well, it was a while after . . . remembering 
my love for you ... I suddenly saw how perhaps, after 
all, I had wronged her. 

DOROTHY. It was just three years after that you asked 
me to marry you again. 

EDWARD. You forgave me. Let's forget it. It was good 
to feel I was still a bit of a fool. 

DOROTHY. Folly for certain, it was then? 

EDWARD. And not so old at heart as you thought. 

DOROTHY. I like your declarations, Edward. They're 
different. But never from the beginning have you been 
like the others. 

EDWARD. And I was never jealous of any of the three. 

DOROTHY. Four. 
EDWARD. Four? 

DOROTHY. One that you never knew about. I told you 
though I should never marry . . . and I never have. Per- 



76 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

haps I'm as frightened at the meaning I might find in it . . . 
as you ought to have been. 

EDWARD. They made you just as miserable at times, 
Dorothy, as if you had married them. 

DOROTHY. Poor dears. 

EDWARD. And two out of the three were really perfect 
fools. 

DOROTHY. Three out of the four, my friend, were perfect 
fools . . . helpless fools. 

EDWARD. Then which wasn't? 

DOROTHY. The one you never guessed about. Don't 
try to, even now. He never really cared for me, you see 
. . . and I knew he didn't . . . and so I was ashamed to 
tell you. 

EDWARD. Now when was that? 

DOROTHY. You're trying to guess. 

EDWARD. No, honestly . . . 

DOROTHY. Do you remember a time when I was very 
cross with life and wouldn't act for a whole year ... in the 
days when I still could? I went down to Grayshott and 
started a garden ... a failure of a garden. And you came 
down to see me . . . and we talked into the dark. And I 
said I ought to have married father's scrubby-headed assist- 
ant and had ten children. . , . 

EDWARD. I vaguely remember. 

DOROTHY. Well, it wasn't then . . . but shortly after. 

EDWARD. You wanted that experience. . . . 

DOROTHY. No, no! How dare you? Am I that sort of a 
creature . . . collecting sensations? Sometimes, Edward, I 
find you the biggest fool of the lot ... a fool at heart, 
which is worse than a fool at head . . . and wickeder. 

EDWARD. I'm sorry! 

DOROTHY. Never mind, it's not your fault now if fresh 
air disagrees with you. And you can't open the window 
here, for only dust comes in. 

EDWARD. Is the room stuffy? 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 77 

DOROTHY. Yes . . . but so's London . . . and so's life. 

EDWARD. I do remember there was a time when I thought 
you were hardening a little. 

DOROTHY. Well, it wasn't from that bruising. No man 
or woman in this world shall make me hard. 

EDWARD. Dorothy, will you marry me? 

DOROTHY [Mer voice pealing oui.^ Oh, my dear! 

EDWARD. That's what you said to Blackthorpe when he 
offered you his millions on a bright Sunday morning. Don't 
say it to me. 

DOROTHY. I never called him My Dear ... I was much 
too proper . . . and so is he! But you are the Dear of one 
comer of my heart ... it is the same old corner always 
kept for you. No, no . . . that sort of love doesn't live 
in it. So for the . . . seventh? . . . let's make it the 
seventh time . . . oh, yes, I wear them on my memory's 
breast like medals ... no, I won't. 

EDWARD. Very well. If you don't want to raise five 
thousand pounds you'd better close the theatre after this 
next play's produced. 

DOROTHY. Heavens above . . . that's what we started 
to discuss. What have we been talking of since? 

EDWARD. Dear Dorothy ... I never do know what we 
talk of. I only know that by the time I've got it rx)und to 
business it's time for you to go. 

DOROTHY. Yes, I said I'd be back at the theatre by half- 
past twelve. 

EDWARD. It's long after. 

DOROTHY. I'm so glad. They'll finish the act without 
me and lunch. I never want food. Isn't it odd? 

EDWARD. Do you decide to close the theatre after this 
next play? 

DOROTHY. I decide not to ask man, woman or devil for 
another penny. 

EDWARD. Then you close. 

DOROTHY. But if it's a success? 



78 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

EDWARD. Then, when it's finished, you may have a few 
pounds more than four hundred a year. 

DOROTHY. I don't want 'em. 

EDWARD. But you'll close? 

DOROTHY. I will. This time I really will and never, 
never open again. I want my Abbey. I want to sit in the 
sun and spoil my complexion and acquire virtue. Do you 
know I can have fourteen volumes at a time from the London 
Library? 

EDWARD. Yes . . . don't spoil your complexion. 

DOROTHY. Well . . . when it is really m y complexion and 
no longer the dear Public's I may get to like it better. To 
acquire knowledge for its own sake! Do you never have 
that hunger on you? To sit and read long books about 
Byzantium. Not frothy foolish blank verse plays . . . but 
nice thick meaty books. To wonder where the Goths went 
when they vanished out of Italy. Knowledge and Beauty! 
It's only when you love them for their own sake that they 
yield their full virtue to you. And you can't deceive them 
. . . they always know. 

EDWARD. I'm told that the secret of money making's 
something like that. 

DOROTHY. Oh, a deadlier one. Money 's alive and strong. 
And when money loves you... look out. 

EDWARD. It has never wooed me with real passion. Six 
and eightpences add up slowly. 

Dorothy throws herself hack in her chair and her eyes 
up to the ceiling. 

DOROTHY. You've ucvcr seen me asking for money and 
boasting about my art, have you? 

EDWARD. That has been spared me. 

DOROTHY. I'm sorry you've missed it for ever. It is 
just as if the millionaire and I . . . 

EDWARD. Though they weren't always millionaires. 

DOROTHY. They were at heart. I always felt we were 
Striking some weird bargain. For all I'd see at his desk 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 79 

was a rather apologetic little man . . . though the Giant 
Money was outlined round him like an aura. And he'd 
seem to be begging me as humbly as he dared to help save 
his little soul . . . though all the while the Giant that en- 
veloped him was business-like and jovial and stern. I 
shouldn't like to be the marrow of a shadowy giant, Edward 
. . . with no heart's blood in me at all. 

EDWARD. That's why our modern offices are built so 
high, perhaps. 

DOROTHY. Yes, he reaches to the ceiling. 

EDWARD. And are very airless, as you say. 

DOROTHY. Ah ... it's he that breathes up all the air. 
You have made rather an arid world of it, haven't you, 
Edward . . . you and Henry and John and Samuel and 
William and Thomas? 

EDWARD. Will Mary Jane do much better? 

DOROTHY. Not when you've made a bloodless woman of 
her. And you used to bite your pipe and talk nonsense 
to me about acting . . . about its necessarily debilitating 
effect, my dear Dorothy, upon the moral character I Edward, 
would I cast for a king or a judge or a duchess actors that 
couldn't believe more in reigning or judging or duchessing 
than you wretched amateurs do ? 

EDWARD. We "put it over," as you vulgar professionals 
say. 

DOROTHY. Do you think so? Because the public can't 
teU the difference, as the voice of my business manager 
drones. I've fancied sometimes that poor actors, playing 
parts . . . but with real faith in their unreal . . . yet live 
those lives of yours more truly. Why . . . swiftly and 
keenly I've lived a hundred lives. 

EDWARD. No . . . the trouble with my patients . . . 

DOROTHY. Of course they are! That's why I've to be 
brought here by force. I never feel ill. 

EDWARD. Never a pain in the pocket! 

DOROTHY. I never feel it. 



80 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

EDWARD. The trouble when most people do is that it's all 
they can feel or believe in. And I have to patch them up. 

DOROTHY. Put a patch on the pocket . . . tonic the 
poor reputation. 

EDWARD. What can I say to them? If they found out 
that the world as they've made it doesn't exist ... or per- 
haps their next world as they've invented it either. . . . 

DOROTHY. Oh but I think that exists . . . just about as 
much. And that you'll all be there . . . busthng among 
the clouds . . . making the best of things . . . beating your 
harps into coin . . . bargaining for eternity . . . and saying 
that of course what you go on in hope of is another and a 
better world. 

EDWARD. Shall we meet? 

DOROTHY. I think not. I flung my soul over the foot- 
lights before ever I was sure that I had one . . . well, I 
was never uncomfortably sure. As you warned me I should 
. . . biting your pipe. No, thanks, I don't want another. 
I have been given happier dreams. Do you remember that 
letter of your father's that I would read? 

EDWARD. No. . . . 

DOROTHY. Oh yes! Think twice, my dear boy, think 
twice before you throw yourself away on this woman. 

EDWARD. Old innocent! You were the cautious one. 

DOROTHY. But you nevcr knew, Edward, how tempted 
I was. 

EDWARD. Dorothy, don't! The years haven't taught me 
to take that calmly. 

DOROTHY. Every woman is what I was more or less. . . . 

EDWARD. Less. 

DOROTHY. So they seem. And you won't pay the price 
of more. 

EDWARD. What was it? I was ready . . . and ready to 
pay. 

DOROTHY. The price to you of my freedom when you love 
me! Why . . . dear Edward . . . your jaw sets even now. 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 81 

And so . . . for your happiness . . . that your minds may 
be easy as you bustle through the world's work ... so we 
must seem to choose the cat-like comfort of the fireside, 
the shelter of your cheque-book and our well-mannered 
world. And, perhaps I should have chosen that if I could 
have had my choice. 

EDWARD. Dorothy! 

DOROTHY. Had not some ruthless windy power from 
beyond me . . . blown me free. 

EDWARD. Dorothy . . . I've loved you . . . and I do 
. . . with a love I've never understood. But sometimes I've 
been glad you didn't marry me . . . prouder of you as you 
were. Because my love would seem a very little thing. 

DOROTHY. It is. 

EDWARD. I never boasted . . . never of that. 

DOROTHY. But the more precious ... a jewel. And if 
we're to choose and possess things . . . nothing finer. 
My dear . . . what woman wouldn't love you? You've 
not been flattered enough. Never mind . . . you lost no 
dignity on your knees. I had no choice though but to 
be possessed ... of seven angels. Oh, my dear friend 
. . . could you ever have cast them out? 

EDWARD. I've watched them wear you through . . . the 
seven angels of your art that kept you from me. 

DOROTHY. Yes . . . I'm a weary woman. 
For a moment there is silence. 

EDWARD. But sometimes IVe wondered . . . what we 
two together might have done. Dorothy, why didn't you 
try? 

DOROTHY. Not with these silly self-conscious selves. 
Poor prisoners . . . born to an evil time. But visions do 
come ... of better things than we are ... of a theatre 
not tinselled . . . and an office not dusty with law . . . 
all rustling with quarrelsome papers. How wrong to tie up 
good lively quarrels with your inky tape! Oh, shut your 
eyes . . . it's easier to see then. Are they shut? 



82 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

EDWARD. Close. And the grip of your hand is wonderful 
for the eyesight. 

DOROTHY. Aren't you an artist, too, Edward . . . our 
fault if we forget it. For Law is a living thing. It must 
be, mustn't it? 

EDWARD. Yes ... I had forgotten. 

DOROTHY. My dreams and the stories of them are worth- 
less unless I've a living world to dream of? What are words 
and rules and names? Armour with nothing inside it. So 
our dreams are empty, too. 

EDWARD. Dorothy, my dear, it may sound as silly as 
ever when I say it . . . but why, why didn't you marry me? 

DOROTHY. Yes ... I should have made a difference to 
this habitation, shouldn't I? 

EDWARD. Would you have cared to come here then? 

DOROTHY. Always . . . the spirit of me. And I do think 
you were a better match than the looking-glass. 

EDWARD. I promise you should always have found your- 
self beautiful ... in my eyes. 

DOROTHY. But I'm widowed of my looking-glasses, 
Edward. Have you noticed that for fifteen years there's 
not been one in my house . . . except three folding ones in 
the bathrooms? 

EDWARD. I remember my wife remarking it. 

DOROTHY. Some women did . . . and some men were 
puzzled without knowing why. 

EDWARD. She wondered how you studied your parts. 

DOROTHY. I coiild have told her how I learnt not to . . . 
and it's rather interesting. 

EDWARD. Tell me. 

DOROTHY. This is perhaps the little bit of Truth I've 
found . . . my little scrap of gold. From its brightness 
shines back all the vision I have . . . and I add it proudly 
to the world's heap. Though it sounds the silliest thing 
... as silly as your loving me at fifty-seven, more babyishly 
than you did at seventeen. 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 83 

EDWARD. Please heaven my clerks don't see me till . . . 

DOROTHY. Till you're quite self-conscious again. Well 
. . . before the child in me died . . . such an actress, as 
you all thought, as never was . . . 

EDWARD. "0 breath of Spring! Our wintry doubts have 
fled." 

DOROTHY. But, remember, all children could be like that. 

EDWARD. I deny it. 

DOROTHY. And that's why they're not. Well, growing 
older, as we say . . . and self-conscious, Edward ... I 
found that the number of my looking-glasses grew. Till one 
day I counted them . . . and big and small there were forty- 
nine. That day I'd bought the forty-ninth ... an old 
Venetian mirror ... so popular I was in those days and 
felt so rich. Yes . . . then I used to work out my parts in 
front of every mirror in turn. One would make me prettier 
and one more dignified. One could give me pathos and one 
gave me power. Now there was a woman used to come 
and sew for me. You know! I charitably gave her jobs 
. . . took an interest in her "case" . . . encouraged her 
to talk her troubles out for comfort's sake. I wasn't 
interested ... I didn't care one bit . . . it didn't comfort 
her. She talked to me because she thought I liked it . . . 
because she thought I thought she liked it. But, oddly, 
it was just sewing she liked and she sewed well and sewing 
did her good . . . sewing for me. You remember my LUy 
Prince in The Backwater? 

EDWARD. Yes. 

DOROTHY. My first real failure. 

EDWARD. I liked it. 

DOROTHY. My first dead failure . . . dear Public. Do 
you know why? I hadn't found her in the mirrors, I'd 
found her in that woman as she sewed. 

EDWARD. I didn't think it a failure. 

DOROTHY. Well . . . the dear Public wouldn't pay to 
see it . . . and we've found no other word. But I knew 



84 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

if that was failure now I meant to fail . . . and I never 
looked in a mirror again. Except, of course, to do my 
hair and paint my poor face and comically comfort myself 
sometimes ... to say . . . "Dorothy, as mugs go it's not 
such an ugly mug." I took the looking-glasses down . . . 
I turned their faces to the wall. For I had won free from 
that shadowed emptiness of self. But nobody understood. 
Do you? 

EDWARD. If I can't . . . I'll never say that I love you 
again. 

DOROTHY. What can we understand when we're all so 
prisoned in mirrors that whatever we see it's but our- 
selves . . . ourselves as heroes or slaves . . . suffering, tri- 
umphant . . . always ourselves. Truth lives where only 
other people are. That's the secret. Turn the mirror to 
the wall and there is no you . . . but the world of other 
people is a wonderful world. 

EDWARD. We've called them your failures perhaps . . • 
when we wouldn't follow you there. 

DOROTHY. And I that have, proudly, never bargained 
was so tempted to bargain for success ... by giving you 
what your appetites wanted . . . that mirrored mannequin 
slightly oversize that bolsters up your self-conceit. 

EDWARD. But you had meant our youth to us, Doro- 
thy. . . . 

DOROTHY. I'd given you that . . . the flower of me. 
Had I grudged it? 

EDWARD. I think we're frightened of that other world. 

DOROTHY. Well you may be! 

EDWARD. If we couldn't find ourselves there with our 
virtues and our vanity . . . the best and worst of what we 
know. 

DOROTHY. So you all failed me, you see ... for I'd 
given you my life and what other had I? And I failed . . . 
died . . . not to be born again. Oh, my poor theatre! 
Keep it for a while then to patronise and play with. But 



FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 85 

one day it shall break you all in pieces. And now my last 
curtsey's made . . . 

The paper knife she has been playing with snaps. 

EDWARD. Dorothy . . . what an omen! Not your last 
visit here, too! 

DOROTHY. A fine omen. I do not surrender my sword! 
But I shouldn't march off quite so proudly, Edward, if it 
weren't for a new voice from that somewhere in me where 
things are born sajdng . . . shall I tell you what it says? 

EDWARD. Please. 

DOROTHY. The scene is laid in Dorothy's soul. Charac- 
ters ... A voice . . . Dorothy. Dorothy discovered as the 
curtain rises in temper and tears. The voice: "Thirty-five 
years finding out your mistake! But that's a very short 
tirne." Dorothy: "Boohoo! . . . but now I'm going to die." 
The voice: ''Who told you so?" Dorothy: "Oh . . . aren't 
I? ... or rather Am I not?" The voice: ''Dorothy, my 
dear . . . what led you that November day to your ruined 
Abbey? What voice was it called to you so loud to make 
it yours? Yours! What are you beside the wisdom of its 
years? You must go sit, Dorothy, sit very patiently, in the 
sunshine under the old wall . . . where marigolds grow . . . 
and there's one foxglove . . . (hsh! I planted it!). Did it 
trouble those builders . . . who built it not for themselves 
. . . not for you . . . but to the glory of God they built 
it . . . did it trouble them that they were going to die?" 
Dorothy: "If they'd known that the likes of me would one 
day buy it with good hard cash they'd have had heart 
failure on the spot. Besides they did die and their blessed 
Abbey's a ruin." Two thousand five hundred pounds it 
cost me to do it upl 

EDWARD. Well? 

DOROTHY. If I say anything like that, of course, the voice 
is silent. But if I sit there after sunset when the world's 
all still ... I often sit to watch the swallows, and if you 
keep quiet they'll swoop quite close . . . then I can hear 



86 FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE 

the voice say: "They built the best they could . . . they 
built their hearts into the walls . . . they mixed the mortar 
with their own heart's blood. They spoke the truth that 
was in them and then they were glad to die." "But was it 
true? "I ask. "And see how the wall is crumbling." And 
then the voice says, " What is Truth but the best that we can 
build? . . . and out of its crumbling other truth is built. 
Are you tired, Dorothy?" I answer: Yes, that I am very 
tired. I sit there till the stars shine and there are friendly 
spirits around me. Not the dead . . . never . . . but the 
unborn . . . waiting their heritage . . . my gift to them 
. . . mine, too. That's the true length of life . . . the 
finished picture of his being that the artist signs and sells 
. . . gives . . . loses! It was his very soul and it is gone. 
But then he is glad to go ... to be dust again . . . noth- 
ingness ... air ... for he knows most truly . . . 

EDWARD. What? 

DOROTHY. Why, I told you. That he was always nothing- 
ness called by some great name . . . that the world of 
other people is the only world there is. Edward . . . what's 
the time? 

EDWARD. Past one. 

DOROTHY. Well, I'm hungry. Take me out and give me 
lunch. 

EDWARD. Bless you ... I will. 

With three fine gestures she puts on her hat again. Time 
was when one would sit through forty minutes of a dull 
play just to see Dorothy take of her hat and put it on 
again. Much less expressively he finds his and they 
go out together. The clerks all stare ecstatically as 
she passes. 



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